Vergeltungswaffe

Gents Steve might be asleep but he did give folk a warning a few pages back. 😉 

Ok, so not only historically illiterate. Got it.

My apologies. I assumed you were historically literate.  I was paraphrasing Churchill's quote about democracy to acknowledge that while there are problems with the the UN (and democracy) that it is still (like democracy) the best we've yet come up with.
Again, I apologise. I wont make that assumption again.

☺️ Thanks for your kind words Sir Vacillator.
I will one day apply myself fully to a set of mods for RT assuming Messers Putin and Xi don't bring about the end before I get the chance.

This, absolutely, and it has been around for a fair while. I recall watching news coverage of Gulf War 1 in the UK (can't recall whether it was BBC or ITV) with a report from a journalist accompanying the leading dismounted elements of a British Army infantry recce unit. They had come under machine gun fire and were in good cover waiting for artillery support  to do their thing but the journalist was rattling on dramatically about the attack grinding to a halt under heavy enemy fire, woe and catastrophe etc. I remember thinking at the time that reporter clearly had no historical or military context within which to recognise this as the 'small change' of day to day operations (although clearly important to the guys actually being shot at).

Right?!  Gawd help us if we in the west ever get into a real war.  After the first setback we will be ready to wave white flags if this proxy war is any indication.  I am losing count of how many times the Russians take a small berg somewhere after weeks of trying and people freak out - “aaah, see the Russians are winning!  Abandon ship!!”  
Meanwhile the Ukrainians are basically spelling on bridges with arty shells and crippling Russian logistics, after collapsing a Russian front in the north, pushing them off Kharkiv, stalling then Donbas assault, and now this thing in Kherson.  But those are just flukes as the “Russians bide their time” and wait for their moment…while bleeding all over everything.

It is always easy to begin a war, but very difficult to stop one.
-- Gaius Sallustius Crispus
I see your Machiavelli and raise you Sallust. 😎

Those graphics look like 3rd party asset stuff, so there isn't much to see there that has been created from the ground-up that I can see. The Unity store has packs of assets that developers can buy (trees, bushes, etc)- I expect this engine is similar. That saves some time on art, but games end up with very similar styles, due to the abdication of that aspect of creative control. A tree is a tree is a tree, but when I open games now, I'm seeing a lot of the same ones across titles. A game should have its own look, as far as my preference goes.
This individual has more work ahead than they comprehend, I believe. They may come up with an approach to the coding to make a facsimile of CMx2, but there's far more work to be done to get any parity.
This is a massive undertaking- even with an existing engine, forget about starting from scratch. There's a vast amount to be done that isn't in that video. The overall code to make the knock-off, the pathfinding, basic UI, AI behaviors, terrain systems and interactions, ballistic calculations- all the stuff people refine in their brains every time they play the game- all of that requires a massive time and effort sink by developers. We discuss a lot of that here, so people can understand some of the insanity of fixing things that seem "minor". Everything impacts something else with any adjustments, so things can go off in weird directions when making something.
Does it allow for modding? Steve and Charles baked this into the DNA of the game. That hooks oddballs that like to dissemble things, and remake them. It gives community and an extended life to the game. Also- updates. BFC keeps all games in patch-parity. Will this game have those aspects in its DNA, as well?
Then, there's the rest of the content. A map editor is necessary for any CM-engine parity. That's like designing a game-within-a-game, again- from scratch. Using someone else's ideas as a template can only get one so far here. There's also the other stuff that BFC includes that people expect- campaigns, maps, scenarios, and quick battles. I can tell you from experience, that time sink is no joke. Years of work, if you want to make something of quality from the ground up.
The "it's easy!" attitude is somewhat perplexing, but maybe the guy has unlimited time, unlimited talent, and the resources to keep doing this for as long as it takes. I'll root for anyone taking the challenge of making historical simulations on, so maybe it transpires- but I believe this road stretches far deeper into the forest than this person realizes (to do it right, anyway).

July 16th, 1145 hours.
Triumph to tragedy.
“Sir…I’m not raising TOC” the RTO said, hesitatingly. Booth met the man’s eyes. Silent dread communicated between them.  He was about to tell him to try one more time when the FSGT came trundling back around the corner in his ‘peep.’ That’s not good. A gnawing, creeping realisation made its way up out of the small of Booth’s back and crawled up his spine. The NCO’s face was boulder-like. Jaw set…
TOC had been hit. Hard. They had failed to displace for one minute too many and got plastered by Soviet artillery, much like the Soviets in Dorfborn were having their back broken by vengeful American artillery fire. Like one of the four horsemen, the FSGT had been tasked with riding back to his CO to deliver the grim news. Basically, every senior officer in TOC had been taken out: the LTC, S-1 and S-3 had all been wounded enough to warrant evacuation. The XO was severely wounded, an arm and a leg severed, his condition critical. The HHC CO killed, caught away from any cover momentarily, ripped to shreds by shrapnel. All that was left of the staff was the S-2, who refused to be evacuated despite painful neck wounds, and the duty NCOs.
“You’re it” the FSGT growled, “you got seniority. The Battalion’s yours, sir.” A thunderclap. Booth was in command. The entirety of TF Dragon. Well over 700 surviving men, 700 souls. The burden could’ve crushed him then and there, and likely should have, but something turned in him. Eyes narrowing, he quickly told the dependable NCO to hurry ahead back to what was left of the TOC and have the S-2 re organise the NCOs into acting battle captains. He would follow shortly in his command track, handing off command of the unit to his equally dependable XO, 1LT Noonan. He would hurl together a hasty TOC and strain every nerve to get the unit back under control.
Chapter 5: Thorn in the Side
Northwest of Neuhof, July 16th, 1600 hours.
Luckily, the TOC’s survivors showed themselves up to the task. They had worried Booth at first, most had some minor wounds and all had looked deeply shaken. The M577s were ruined messes, but neither had taken direct hits, and much of the vital planning material was salvageable. Whatever morale had been wavering was firmed up by the arrival of the CPT and the news that B Team had savaged the enemy to its front. Booth had energized the headquarters with his arrival, distracted grieving men by entrusting them with key tasks (appealing, subconsciously, to the professional pride of each individual NCO), and focused their efforts back on the fight – a fight he had convinced them they were winning. The impact was electric. Within the hour they were ready to receive orders from brigade, by 1500 the bulk of the battalion was pulling back, knowing full well the punch-drunk MRR to their front was in no condition to follow closely and fill the gap, let alone pursue with vigour or violence.
As the skeleton TOC organised the move and conformed with orders, Booth was presented with his first command decision: the TF had mauled the MRR so thoroughly that a neighbouring Soviet unit had begun to shake out into the attack on a town called Uttrichausen with its right flank twisting in the wind. Brigade was willing to move boundaries on a dime and have TF Dragon nail the lead MRB of that unit from the flank. Booth leapt at the opportunity, and task organised his Scout Platoon and surviving anti-tank platoon to do so. They hadn’t had time to resupply, and thus the fight was going to be a tight one, but the potential payoff was worth it; success could likely keep the entire brigade counterpunching whilst the next line of defence was constructed. The Soviets were templated to be passing through Dollbach around 1630 hours, beyond which was their probable line of departure.

 
Command devolved to 1LT Pemberton, the Anti-tank Platoon CO, and his surviving 6 ITOWs. 1LT Horning, the battalion scout platoon leader, would race ahead with his extremely depleted force; two M113s, an ITOW (with only 4 missiles) and a meagre 3 Dragon missiles. He had two scout sections to spare, led by SGTs Roy and Chung. They would engage forward elements and buy time for Pemberton’s two sections and the attached air-defence joes.
Pemberton, bumping along in his ‘peep’ hastily did a map recce and came up with BPs. He prayed to God the map was accurate to the terrain, there was no time to do a proper terrain walk. This was an aggressive interdiction, no doubt about it, the young man thought. His eagerness to hit the enemy when they were exposed was tempered by the ever-human fear of the unknown.  How to execute this fight? Across the valley the enemy would traverse was a thick treeline. The Soviets must have known their flank was in the air by now, and if he was the Soviet commander, he’d have units in that treeline dominating the heights overlooking Dollbach. How to fire into the valley without exposing his vulnerable ITOWs? A crossfire, that’s what he’d have to establish, keyhole positions, he thought with finality. Pemberton had his plan.
Taskings:
BP1: Scout ITOW, 1st AT section (alternate)
BP2 – 1st AT section (main)
BPs 3A & 3B – 2nd AT section (main and alternate)
EA Alpha – Forward of point 430, left-flank of Dollbach
EA Bravo – Forward of point 401, right-flank of Dollbach
***
The Soviets’ hackles were raised; thought 1LT Horning, as he watched a pair of Hinds flit in and out of sight across the valley, flashing over the thick, forested hills. They had put a lot of combat aviation forward, clearly cognizant of the exposed flank of this unit. It was a high summer day, and any vehicular movement kicked up hanging dust clouds, prompting Horning to spread his thin resources out, and give strict instructions for the tracks to make quick dashes, pausing frequently to let the dust settle as they sheltered under the next nearest copse of trees. Slowly, but surely, they managed to set themselves up in their assigned positions, finding decent concealment and cover to establish firing positions from.

By 1604 hours, Horning and SGT Chung have set themselves up in excellent firing positions on the extreme flanks of the AO.

As the scouts settled into their hides, a sudden pop is heard as a Stinger missile screeches upwards. One of the hunting Hinds had raised itself up too much, for too long, across the valley and an American AD man had chanced a shot.

The Hind’s weapons operator saw the tell-tale report and, swearing, alerted the pilot in time. The Hind bucked down sharply, and the missile failed to track. The other hinds, spooked by their comrades’ close call, follow suit. The air threat abates, for now.
SGT Chung, only momentarily distracted by the firing of the Stinger, shakes his head and concentrates. Over the distant thwock-thwock of the omnipresent Hinds, he can hear – more accurately, feel – the rumble of an approaching formation. A moment later, he can see it for himself: an entire MRC. He urgently whispers to his RTO to send the word. The RTO duly whispers the code phrase for contact: Rio Grande. The pre-arranged cluster mission begins to fire, forcing the BTRs to accelerate through the maelstrom.

“Jesus, Mary and Stonewall Jackson sir, that’s got to be an entire company – what the hell we going to do about that with just one shot?” whispers Horning’s RTO in an awed tone. Horning ignores the man and presses himself further against the ground, putting his hands under his chest. He awkwardly cranes his neck downwards and rolls his eyes up, attempting to keep a good eye on the BTRs while masking as much unnatural colour – his skin, the whites of his eyes – as he can. He wished he had time to apply camo paint. If any of this mass of enemy units spotted him, they were dead. BTR turrets were awkwardly trying to scan for targets, but their 14mm machine cannons were bouncing around visibly. Good he thought, hope the bastard gunners are blind. More problematic of course, were the Soviet rifleman hanging out of the rear hatches, with the occasional BTR having a Soviet soldier bouncing a SA-7 on his shoulder, scanning the skies for targets.
“Dragon 2 to Dragon 1 – “
Horning’s RTO scrambles to lower the volume on the receiver, as SGT Chung continues.
“- I am engaging. Making this missile count. Out.”

It takes a minute for Horning to spot an opportune target for his own position to follow the NCO’s lead. In frustration they watch BTRs briskly march past. Then, it happens: a BTR visibly slows down as it attempts to push through a small windbreak of trees. Tapping the Dragon gunner on his steel helmet, the 1LT points towards the target with an arrow-straight arm. The missile hits, but barely, almost passing between the wheels and underneath the BTR.


“Get the track to make a run for SGT Roy’s OP/LP, he’s got the spare missile. Run him down here and lets see if we can’t hit something else. Once you’ve passed that message on we are displacing, shift 30m right. One at a time, keep low and copy my stance.” The Officer whispers urgently.
***
Pemberton could see his young driver struggling to restrain himself from speeding forward. It was a battle the PFC was losing, as the distance inexorably widened between their ‘peep’ and the ITOWs and VADs that formed their small column. A soft word saw the vehicle pull back again. The 1LT couldn’t blame his driver’s haste. They had just arrived with the first section of his platoon, and already there was a thin spire of smoke reaching out from the valley, in what he estimated was EA Bravo. The lead Soviet elements were already in the area. There was no time to waste. The section raced towards its assigned BP, with VADs pulling off the road to take up covering positions.

Horning was desperately trying to shift the artillery fires to the overpass and road bridge; this lead Soviet company was making tracks, pushing through their anaemic ambush with remarkable discipline. The tail of the column was now entering EA Bravo. He could hear SGT Chung ordering SPC Brody, the commander of their sole ITV, to engage.
The ITV duly rumbled forward from the treeline it had taken as its hide in BP1 and inches forward along the flat plateau to its front. Brody soon identifies a plethora of targets. With a pop the first ITOW roars out, popping up then being pushed down by the gunner. It reaches out, a red dot in Brody’s field of vision. 

“Target!” the SPC roars, and then guides on: “Gunner, traverse right, two PCs forward of the line of trees”
“On. Firing!” comes the excited response. The second ITOW races out, but Brody can already tell its going to be a miss, as the Gunner struggles to both chase the accelerating BTR and keep the missile down. It passes just high.

Two sweating men in the cargo hatch quickly reload the last two missiles, but Brody’s crew once again have a mixed engagement. The third missile strikes another BTR, this one racing up a crop-filled slope towards a windbreak and the MSR. It explodes violently. Their fourth shot misses entirely, the missile going ballistic and slamming only a few dozen feet in front of them along the ridge, inert.
“Driver reverse, back to our original position.” Brody says through gritted teeth, whilst deploying smoke to cover the retrograde movement. Bitterly disappointed, nevertheless his part of the fight is over. Even as he pulls back, he hears 1LT Horning report the entry of yet another mass of enemy vehicles. If only we had time to resupply.

Unbeknownst to the disappointed Scout ITOW crew, however, Pemberton and his three anti-tank launchers had just taken up position in BP2. Pemberton and his RTO leapt from their Jeep and raced forward, taking cover among some trees at the lip of the ridge, to better direct fire whilst guiding his tracks into positions. The officer knew fire discipline would be key, not a missile could go to waste firing at a target another vehicle was already engaging. A bit awkwardly at first, but successfully, he used some landmarks to assign fire sectors to his three ITOWs.

Like their Scout counterpart, however, the anti-tankers have trouble striking their fast, fleeting targets. Two TOWs miss, badly. It is not until the third TOW that a target is struck successfully. Pemberton puts out a calming word, his unnaturally even voice having its intended effect. The gunners redouble their efforts, taking their time to line up the shots.
“Aim high, guide low boys, don’t rush things” the officer chides.
ITOWs begin to hit with regularity over the ensuing minutes, and the enemy BTRs stop manoeuvring so smartly. Casualties and evasive actions cause the formation to become strung out, which only increases their exposure. The young gunners stop suffering from “buck fever” and are better able to pick out lone targets. From his vantage point, Pemberton can report an increasing number of burning enemy BTRs with exultant satisfaction. Between 1615-1616 hours, 6 TOWs are fired for 4 kills, illustrating the furious rate of fire and the cornucopia of targets.


Whilst BP2 turns EA Bravo into a charnel house, the balance of the AT platoon arrives on the heights, and transit through the small town of Zillbach towards BP3. 

There’s just one problem, though: SGT Chung and his team, who boldly have remained in their initial firing positions to act as an OP/LP, spot a new threat.
“Dragon 2 to Dragon 1”
“This is Dragon 1”
“This callsign currently observing four times enemy tangoes, treeline near road bridge. Out to you.”
“Acknowledged, Dragon 2. We’ll let the AT know. Out.”

1LT Pemberton warns his leading SPC in the second section, and the determined enlisted man simply states they’ll keep the threat in mind and attempt to find positions masked to this new threat in BP3. Indeed, two of the three ITOWs can do just that. One, however, led by a SPC Catalano, running out of space to jockey, is surprised to find a T-64 aiming – at him!
Catalano’s gunner fires twice in rapid succession, more from shock than aggressive mindedness. The first TOW becomes a satellite, spinning off into space, and the second slams into the ground just on the other side of their hull down position. Catalano sees a giant burst of flame, and briefly and irrationally believes his gunner has scored a hit…then sees a small green dot grow larger and larger. It passes over their vehicle, and even ensconced inside the vibrating M113 and through his CVC, he can hear a faint sucking woosh. Too close for comfort. Gathering his wits, he gets his driver to reverse.

 
While BP3 struggles to find good positions, Pemberton continues to reap a grim bounty. Handing off targets personally and ensuring the pre-assigned fire sectors are maintained, BP2 continues to turn EA Bravo into a hellscape. Individual Soviet BTRs mill about in confusion. Their indecisiveness often fatal.

Despite the presence of the T-64s making BP3 a no-go for firing into EA Alpha, the three ITOWs (including a recovered SPC Catalano) can take positions that allow them to thicken the fire in EA Bravo. The initial engagements are frustrated by low field of view and limited time to target, but they eventually tally a few BTRs themselves. 

Perhaps spurred on by the suffering MRB’s survivors, the Hinds make a belated reappearance. This time any pretence of careful flying is tossed aside; the Hinds roar up and forward, seeking to strafe the assailants. One Hind is able to get a burst off, severely damaging one of Pemberton’s ITOWs, but four Hinds are swiftly destroyed by the overwhelming amount of SHORAD provided by Booth. One Hind is struck by a stinger and crashes in the valley, destroying a cowshed as its flaming carcass crashes through the structure’s roof.

The flight of the Hinds proves to be a bookend for the engagement at Dollbach. In BP2 the ITOWs begin to report going “black” on ammo, and one by one pop smoke and retreat into the cover of nearby trees. Pemberton himself taps his RTO on the helmet and dashes back to firmer concealment, where he begins to issue orders for the retreat.
The last of the mauled MRB, under the cover of the suicidally courageous Hinds, presses past EA Bravo and out of sight. Trailing them come the T-64s, who break cover and roar forward, in odd mimicry of the Hinds. They wheel to their left and attempt to break past EA Bravo.
Catalano is waiting, and along with the rest of his section in BP3, savage the tanks. In short order, 5 T-64s are burning.



An eerie silence descends… the only living creatures in the valley are wounded and burned Soviet riflemen and crewmen, painfully crawling away from their stricken mounts. The silence does not last, as mortars begin to search out for the Americans in BP3. A round crashes just behind SGT Chung.
“Displace! Back to the track” he screams with furious urgency.
The sound of the mortars fade, and all the SGT can hear is his own rattling breath and a pounding in his ears. He never hears the fateful round: there is just a flash of red, and then a disconnected awareness that something is not right…why am I on my back he ponders? He tries to get up. He cannot. He has no left leg. The realisation sends his mind into overdrive for a few moments, and his last conscious thought is simply an Oh my God before he lapses into unconsciousness and shock. Lying beside him are two of his men. One is killed, the other so severely wounded that he can only lay there in a heap, sucking air in a hideous rattle, before he shortly passes away. Chung’s RTO, on the verge of panic, drags his SGT back to the M113.  

It is the final part of this drama in miniature. As the mortar rounds continue to search out targets, the order from Pemberton is acknowledged across the net: the job was complete. Across the three BPs, the Scouts and Anti-tankers reverse out of sight, and then, slowly pick their way back to the rendezvous point.

Accurately assessing the damage was difficult, and Pemberton could only provide his new boss an estimate. The measure of success would only come in the following hour: the attack had been stopped cold, and the enemy’s lead element was barely a MRC in strength.


 
 

General Patton's Grave




 

It is also worth pointing out that in the US, a bill is never single topic they often contain multiple other pieces of legislation which are in no way connected to the main goal of the bill.  Legislators who vote against a bill may be all for the primary, but cannot support one or more of the "side issues".

During election years we often see "poison pills" inserted into seemingly benign legislation.  This allows one party to smear the other by stating "They voted against providing healthcare to veterans" without mentioning that there was a poison pill which would ban guns, or take away free school lunches.  This is just an example I made up, but the point is to make voting for a popular bill impossible to swallow for a candidate during a re-election campaign.

Yes, we are that screwed up

I am not saying that this was the case for the 20 republicans who voted against the bill, just pointing out that things are seldom as simple as they seem in Washington.

I don't wish to sidetrack the discussion either, and I will say I respect your credentials (and you, based on your posts in general) so your stance does carry a fair bit of weight with me. However, I do feel it's worth pointing out that a fairly recent Pew survey showed that 79% of physicists (compared to 65% of scientists in general and 45% of American adults) support building more nuclear power plants.
And I will leave it at that, apologies for the slightly tangential post...

Well, I'm having the same experience with most of your posts, so let's leave it at that.

Which probably is founded by Putin....

You haven't missed anything.
It'll be ready when it's ready™ .

If the Russians start tossing around nukes...even just tactical ones.  There will be a response.  Now it likely will be tit for tat.  But there will be a response.  I'm sorry you don't think much of Americans and I get why because yeah we have fought a couple of dumb wars recently.  But, the one thing we dislike is a bully and if you let the Russians get away with one nuke, before you know it, there will be two...and so on...
So as I said before...yes.  Bank on it.

To be exact, war is a dark day for all mankind;
some people inexorably find themselves pulled to it
some ironically like a moth to the flame
some like energy and matter to a collapsed star, no light escapes.
To look in another beings eyes, see the suffering, the resentment, the hate...the despair...
to then turn around, sit down and play a game with it...well that takes some suspension or disregard of...something that's within us all...but I have nothing better to do...
 
These are mostly meant for H2H, but there's simple AI plans in there for QB's as well, just nothing fancy.
Just something I threw together in spare time, Hope you all enjoy. (as always, feedback on the maps is appreciated)

Wise words. He who wants peace, prepares for war. Especially with the Russians as neighbour.

And if I tell you that RU is not heading there because it was already there from the beginning? You do know that they had concentration camps simultaneously with Germans?

It will take less effort with equipment than Barbarossa, so 1943 will probably be the next iteration in the East.
I'm looking more forward to crap tanks™ in 1941 though.

I knew it was all about borscht!  Even as a young child I knew deep down in my very soul that beets were the true root of all evil!

Amazing AAR Rinaldi.  Very entertaining.

+1

Colonel (Chaplain), retired in 1989 after 22 years.  His final posting was in the department which was responsible for keeping in touch with retired chaplains who were still on the potential recall list.  That is why it was so funny that he was recalled.  Mom called the general and told him "If Chuck shows up, let me know.  I have some questions for him"

He passed Jan. 1 1991, about 1 1/2 months before the liberation of Kuwait, which is why he was recalled.  As my cousin said "God needed him to welcome any incoming troops"

Thank you for clarifying that. As I said, an Officer is appointed by Congress, and can and may be recalled up to a certain age. It sounds to me like an administrative SNAFU.
God bless him an all of you. He served in one of the most crucial jobs in the Military.