Erwin

That is unfortunate. When a commercial comes on I usually back arrow.

Thank you for all the commercials - they are what make the videos pop.

Yes indeed... But am not sanguine about it. Fascinating and disturbing data. Never saw that b4. Thank you for your post.

For heavens sake plz don;t overdo it and burn out... That unfortunately tends to happen at some point to all of our most talented modders and designers. But, you're on the right track making your designs a little easier. At we discussed there was at least one Dinas mission that I had to restart over a dozen times. Agreed...

I totally get that, Cap. Am simply saying that the reality is that in the horrors of war any "rules" will go out the window. They always have... pre and post Napoleonics. Am certainly not arguing for that horror. Just bracing for it. Both my parents' families were wiped out in WW2 and they were left scarred refugees (from different countries) almost certainly with what we now call PTSD so I have that experience.

Wish you could come over to my house then - have a problem with the water heater...

That is interesting. In my recent play of your "Gung Ho!" Mission 1, i was able to successfully not damage the Mosque as a "Preserve location". So, in that mission at least it is possible to obey the combat "rules/restrictions" and still get a Total Vic. I suppose it comes down to the way the designer allocates points. There may well be situations where one has to level everything and to hell with the "Preserve" restrictions in order to get a win without losing too many friendlies - and that is probably the priority for commanders.

Delighted as always. Thank you, Phil. (I think you are friggin genius.)

Be assured I have great sympathy for that view. I wish it reflected the reality of war thru the ages and also recently. The concern that I have is that we could be in a conflict with a nation (cough - China) that is akin to Nazi Germany and which doesn't really care about lovely human rights rules and we would be fighting with one hand tied behind our backs. By the high standards set out above, we would have to prosecute most of our leaders from WW2. Eg: Dresden? Berlin? All those cities we left in ruins? According to Google: "Official casualty sources estimate battle deaths at nearly 15 million military personnel and civilian deaths at over 38 million." This is horrible reality of war and the price we should expect to have to pay if a larger conflict sublimates out of Ukraine, Israel, (Taiwan?)... Am convinced that in the next war, it will be the civilian infrastructure that will be destroyed leading to huge civilian casualties. Eg: Cyberwar leading to cutting off the water and/or food to (say) Los Angeles and one has a death trap for its 18.5 million (greater LA area). I wish rules made wars more humane, but am convinced that when the chips are down the rules go out the window... and the victor writes the history and the rules.

But, Phil surely you could easily create a mod that teaches people Hebrew while we play the game? Korean too for that matter... How hard could that be?

That would be lovely. But it sounds akin to a Napoleonic era sense of "gentlemen's rules" and rather 19th century. War has no rules - if you want to win. We didn't have to drop nukes on Japan. It was estimated it would cost over 100,000 US lives to conduct an invasion, and Japan still wouldn't surrender until after the 2nd nuke AND Soviet invasion of the N. Islands. Hamas opened up a can of worms by committing atrocities, and a violent reaction is only human. When someone hits you you should be able to hit back much harder. Weak nations use mines and threaten biological/chemical war as those are great equalizers vs the tech superiority of industrialized nations - almost entirely (until recently), "the west". So, natch... rules are created that ban mines and chem/bio etc. Have always considered that we live in a dangerous and insecure world with a thin and fragile veneer of "civilization" covering up our very violent human natures. A long period of relative peace has made our younger (snowflake?) generation(s) think that life can be made totally safe and rules-based. War is horribly ugly and the only rule is to win as fast as possible - and that means permanently removing the enemy threat.

Mentioned over the years many times, also obtaining/swapping ammo from adjacent leg units - like from ammo dumps - rather than the cumbersome current method with vehicles.

We all understand that the first casualty of war is the truth. However this link seems to be pretty explicit about what Hamas did on Oct 7: https://www.timesofisrael.com/idf-shows-foreign-press-raw-hamas-bodycam-videos-of-murder-torture-decapitation/ eg: "...some 43 minutes of harrowing scenes of murder, torture and decapitation from Hamas’s October 7 onslaught on southern Israel, in which over 1,400 people were killed, including raw videos from the terrorists’ bodycams... ...included in the raw footage reel were those of a decapitated soldier, several charred human remains including those of young children..." One can claim, as many Palestinian supporters do, that it's all fake news. To your point... In these days of "deep fakes", anything is possible I suppose...

Elite WEGO is the way to go!

It's much appreciated you are doing this PT. But, it takes time to get through a campaign and am sure many of us are going through your xnt revised "Gung Ho!" campaign. As a result you may not hear much feedback about your other revised campaigns for a while.

I don't want to beat a dead horse here as I can understand what you are trying to say. But, burning people alive, beheading babies, cutting off breasts, mutilating, raping and then killing females... We haven't seen anything like that since ISIS, and before that medieval atrocities... Whatever Hamas was hoping to achieve, at this point it is understandable why Israel wants and needs to eliminate Hamas by any means possible - like we did with ISIS with no public outrage. What has also been an ugly development is the antisemitism and denial of the Oct 7 attacks being demonstrated at (some of) our elite universities. That is also shocking.

Thank you PT!!!

Forgive me if you already considered this, but what about using CMA? The Muj are using a wide variety of WW2 era weapons while the Soviets have the AK's etc. Have no idea of the issues making the Muj Israeli and the Soviets into Arabs.

We hopefully all agree that war is horrible and what is happening in West Bank is horrible. But, HAMAS was elected by the citizens of the West Bank and... according to Google: "A poll conducted after October 7 by a research organization known as the Arab World for Research and Development found that 62 percent of Palestinians in the West Bank have a “very positive” view of Hamas and 68 percent “extremely support” the attacks of October 7.Nov 29, 2023" It's easy to pontificate from the safety of our western lives. But, we have to bear in mind how we would feel if our own spouses had been cut to pieces, raped and our children been burned alive in the Oct 7 attacks. I certainly do not feel able to judge their extreme reactions.

The challenge is that this is a war between people, on one side at least, who do not think like we do, do not have similar beliefs to what we have in the west, nor share our cultural values re valuing human life, and probably welcome martyrdom. This reflects a similar problem we repeatedly see in the Ukrainian thread. (Ditto Vietnam.) Unless one has traveled widely in those nations or come from that culture, it is hard, maybe impossible, to understand what makes people from a different culture "tick" and what their underlying motivations and aspirations are. In WW2 the Allies slid into carpet bombing and mass killing of civilians because lesser actions did not appear to be gaining the desired result. It's like two fanatic fighters who refuse to yield hitting each other harder, and harder... and harder still... in order to get the desired result.

Please resend. Apologies, but I do not see anything from you. Will check back in a few hours.

When folks post their results it would be helpful to specify the experience level (eg: Elite or...?) and that it was either WEGO or Real Time. Can make a big difference. But, thanks for the interesting post. It's great that PT is reworking many of his xnt campaigns.

It's good that this is coming out. Bizarre that Hamas is not concerned about the torture, beheading, burning alive etc. But, very upset of being accused of raping. Thank you for the links, Greg.

Brilliant if it can be done...

Ah... well plz put me on the waiting list.