emodin-

Bigduke6 First off, no offense taken Going back to Russia for a minute, I have to say that I disagree that things would get crazy here if Putin were to buy the farm tomorrow. I will admit that things would get very interesting, I believe that any blood shed would be shed behind the scenes, and not out in the open. And the Russian people tend to have a favorable view of their current government. Sure, there are some opposition movements, but they have been systematically squashed and are seen as almost completely irrelevant by the average Russian. And you don't need to go very far from Moscow or St Petersburg to find people that just don't care about the political situation so long as they can survive and maybe make a bit more money. And THAT is what Putin has done. Putin has also given the Russians back their sense of pride. It is that thing, more than anything else, that I think the Russians love him for. That and they like the stability he has brought to most of them. After all, as I heard in a seminar last week, you aren't any more likely to get killed here than in any other major city in the world....so long as you aren't a businessman. As for racism, it's my sincere belief that the government is deliberately ignoring that card to 1) make a bunch of the nationalists in the country happy so that they can control their votes/activities, and 2) scare the other Russians into supporting the government into 'cracking down' on the racists. I take a very cynical view towards the whole thing, and I would be willing to bet you that if anything the issue of ultra-nationalism in Russia actually HELPS Putin. Moving back to Iraq, I have to agree with you that the whole thing is pretty much lost unless we come up with some wiz-bang new way of dealing with things. I do, however, think that, due to their experiences with Saddam, the Iraqi people were actually used to, and even prepared, to have another dictatorship. That's not to say that it would have been bloodless; simply that if Saddam could do it another dictator could as well (so long as he had the backing of the right people and institutions). After all, even with all of the sanctions still levied against Iraq, Saddam was able to stay in power. The problem I have (and always have had) with our invasion of Iraq was not that it wasn't morally justifiable, but that I never thought that we could do it right. I am afraid all we have done is radicalize the Middle East even more than it was before while at the same time alienating both the more moderate elements of society in the region and our traditional allies in Europe and elsewhere. Those are the things I am most worried about. [EDIT: I almost forgot to mention that contract hits still occur here, just much less than in the 90's. And a friend of mine witnessed a couple of guys jump out of a car and start shooting at another one not far from the center of Moscow a couple of months ago. Like I said, these things still happen, but most Russians are unaffected by them] [ September 22, 2006, 08:18 AM: Message edited by: emodin- ]

I'm going to have to disagree with you there. I don't consider Russia a model 'democracy', but a lot of my friends over here are a lot happier than they were in the early 90's. There is still a LOT of corruption throughout society, but there is also stability, and that's what counts for most of them at the end of the day.

Thanks a bunch, Hub. Now all you need to do to completely satisfy me is set up a European server (or any server with a ping under 190)

And would there be a limit to the number of charges?

Another posibility would be to have some kind of building that provides some kind of intelligence on the enemy's movements (like listening posts). You'd probably want to limit the availability of that information (like how often the information updates, and how large of an area is covered).

Good point. You could up the ante by putting Lebanon in the picture. Something along the lines of the Druze/Christian minorities there actually working with the UN peacekeeping force that is supposed to be sent there due to their dislike over Syrian intervention in Lebanese politics and a backlash against Hezbollah for the recent Israeli military actions. I don't know their timetable for elections, but you could tie that in as well with the idea being the Syrians start getting antsy about the chance of a candidate opposed to Syrian intervention in Lebanese politics as showing a strong chance to take over the government in the next general election. Syria escalates the pressure on Lebanon , and some NATO country peacekeepers get caught in the crossfire. Things escalate from there into a broader conflict. Tie that in with the Iraq thing, or add the accidental or deliberate shoot-down of some high ranking Western politician touring the area, and you might have a plausable reason. The main problem, as I see it, is that you'd be hard pressed to name a government that is willing to commit political suicide-by-foreign-army. Most governments like to stay away from the big no-no's. EDIT: for some clarification [ September 14, 2006, 05:19 AM: Message edited by: emodin- ]

What leaps immediately to mind is a more active/overt Syrian intervention in Iraq. Maybe a cross-border encounter with US or Iraqi border guards where both sides get bloodied and some regular Syrian forces are accused of firing on US/Iraqi forces? You could even follow that up with mounting evidence that Syria has been supplying more sophisticated weaponry (and even training) to the insurgents in Iraq after seeing how this worked in Lebanon against the Israelis. The Iraqi government responds by requesting added US help in securing their border with Syria, and the US puts on a show of force (whereupon they run into all those nasty new ATGMs?). You could have something like that happen, whereby the US government would be able to point to Syria as a major destabalizing factor in Iraq and the ME in general. Just a thought

A rearm spot should work fine even with a Thor MC IF you built it so that it is a building you have to drive into to rearm. It could be buil in such a way as to block all lanes of fire except for one. Of course this would make attacking any heavily armored unit like a Thor HC a bear, but only so long as it stays holed up in the rearm building; and since the attackers score points whether or not a defender is present, this shouldn't have any effect on the attacker's ability to take the objective.

In regards to defensive terrain moding features, maybe you could use some kind of preset feature that the defenders 'place.' I am thinking specifically of the ability to create a dug-in Thor/Apollo position (or one that works for any other vehicle, for that matter). If the defender could only put one of these positions in one place, that should probably elimiate the ability for them to create canyons or massively deformed terrain. Of courses you would probably have to be able to set the facing of such positions as well to make them really effective. Something I just thought of: it might be nice for the defending team to have some kind of bunker or other physical object where they can rearm without calling in a Galaxy, something that would be beneficial especially when the attackers have brought in long range AA assets. [ September 02, 2006, 01:51 AM: Message edited by: emodin- ]

If you mean a static base defense, that seems to be pretty much out of the question at least in the initial stage of the battle. I try to leave one Apollo on station in that small crevice on the East side of the objective just off of the northbound road. To my eternal happiness I found out that arty will bring down dropships, so now I generally target the area where they get clumped up in and pound it with EMP and HE arty. When you have leakers it's best to drop some of your reserves (1-2 bots) to the rear of the enemy and hit them in the rear while they are advancing to the objective. Whenever they do get into the base, transfer over to your hidden Apollo and take pot shots at them, remembering to get back under cover after firing off your shot. After you've killed off most of their Thors, you can start to think about a static defense of the objective area. One last note: arty seems to work wonders if you can hit them while they're tied down in the defense or otherwise engaged, but unless your command track has a visual on the target area it seems to spread all over the place. I finally won the damn thing, so it is possible. Good luck. A quick question to any who know: do the EMP artillery rounds disable dropships (ie do dropships lose control and plummet to the ground if hit by EMP)?

I am having similar problems. In my latest run at it I was able to kill all the enemy bots and occupy the objective, but with only 3 minutes left to go, I wasn't able to get enough points back to win it (comp had ~600 to my ~450 when the timer ended). So far the most important thing seems to be populating the map with as many spread-out AA towers as possible and in such a way that the gaps between their coverage isn't quite large enough to allow enemy dropships to land. There will be holes, but I have had some success flooding the areas where there is a hole (which I try to deliberately leave in the W/NW corner) with Shrikes and Apollos who hopefully shoot down most of the Dropships. Since the AT turrets don't seem to be able to do anything other than annoy the enemy, I usually just drop them in the area as a distraction. I get always get some leakers, so I have to work on taking them out at the objective. I hope that helps some. If anyone else has any suggestions, I'd also appreciate hearing them.

I have to say that a grid would be great. As far as fine-tuning the grid system, you could always call out general grid locations by calling out the grid in general and then the relative positioning like it was your keypad (ie grid '1,1,5' where the grid is 1,1 and keypad 5 [center of grid]) Oh, and in regards to bot handling, it might be nice to have some of keyboard shortcut to sellect the bots without having to jump to the tac map. I'm thinking specifically of doing this so that you could jump from your vehicle to taking control of a bot's vehicle, but it would also be nice to have some way of changing their commands while still being able to engage the enemy (ie without jumping to the tac map at all). Maybe something along the lines of sellecting the bot and then using the alt+ commands to give orders to that bot to attack/defend/move to the position that the crosshairs are on. Just an idea for the future. I think this would help a lot when you're playing by yourself.

Hello all. I'm not sure if this has been suggested before, but I was just thinking that before you actually drop a AAD tower it would be nice if you got some kind of visual cue on the map of its area of coverage BEFORE you actually kicked one off the boat. Maybe something like a dashed green circle? Anyway, I love the game so far, and a major reason I bought it was because I have been paying attention to the boards and how quickly you guys are at releasing updates and new content. I have to take my hat off to you guys for your work. I'm hoping to get some online time, but I'm not sure how many out there are in my neck of the woods (Moscow...I think we're +3 GMT). Anyway, give a shout if you are.

I have no idea if this would be at all effective, but I have read that in the Korean War, Chinese and North Korean soldiers used to try and fire their weapons down the barrel of tanks AFTER they had fired their main gun; the idea being that if the breach was open, the bullets would ricochette inside of the tank and kill the crew. One of the crewmen of one of the tanks commented that they found several bullets lodged in the round after the battle (they could not fully load the round, and it was stuck in place until they dislodged it later). Incidentally, this comes from "The Korean War: Pusan to Chosin", a very good read.

On the subject of HEAT/long rod penetrators, my (limited) understanding of why there is a mixed load also has to do with the way armor innovations have developed over the past few decades. Specifically, the "regular" Abrams tank is better at protection from HEAT rounds than from long-rod penetrators (solid shot rounds), while there is a version of the Abrams that sacrifices some of it's protection against HEAT rounds for protection against long-rod penetrators. (All of my info curtosy of Clancy's non-fiction book "Armored Cav") As a side note on HEAT rounds, there was an article I found on the net (and yes, that makes it instantly suspect) that went on to state that the British were developing a system that would render HEAT rounds inneffective. IIRC, the system basically involved a capacitor hooked to two conducting lines running through the armor of the tank. One of the conducting lines would be towards the exterior of the armor while the other would be closer to the interior (but still meshed INSIDE the overall armor package). The idea was that when a HEAT round (which is basically a jet stream of copper) penetrated through the first conducter and then into the second one, the capacitor would release the stored up charge, sending a huge amount of electricity instantly through the HEAT round, hopefully depleting or destroying most of it instantly. A really cool idea, if it's true. But, as in all things involving warfare, someone will figure out a way to defeat it if it actually exhists.