Exel

I did not say it was. I said there have been hundreds of nuclear detonations and Chernobyl - all producing fallout.

The world has seen hundreds of nuclear detonations of varying magnitudes, and one Chernobyl. We aren't dead yet. What prohibits the use of nuclear weapons is the fear of massive retaliation, not fallout per se. That, and the bad rep, as long as politicians care about that.

The full story is known : the US killed 100,000 civilians with nuclear weapons of mass destruction and yes, they saved x lives with that. No one knows what x is. But everyone knows what 100,000 is : that's 33 9/11s. What exactly is the rest of the full story ? </font>

Hmm, that's an interesting idea. I think it might be good to start the minors as neutrals with no alignment to either side at the beginning, leaving room for diplomacy. Though you'd probably need to deactivate a few events for them.

I like the sub system, and the naval system in general. It may not be the most realistic one, but then again many other parts of SC are similarly abstracted. The gameplay is great and within an acceptable sphere of WW2 realism I think.

It's another group, but it's a similar organized religion all the same. I'm not saying that every believer is a potential suicide bomber or that every religion would get twisted that way, but it's a possibility as long as people blindly subdue themselves to the power of other men with the pretext of authority drawn from God.

Any considerations of implementing this or something along these lines, Hubert?

It launches SC2 alright in the window, but once you fire up a game it loads the graphics twice on top of each other. You got the game screen in the window, but then you also get a smaller game screen on top of that. What's even weirder is that you can only click the bigger screen behind the smaller one, but you can only scroll the smaller screen in front. :confused:

Most Christians believe in what religious authorities (teachers, priests, the Pope, the Bible, etc.) tell them to believe. They are told by other men what is right by God and what they may be expected to do. They don't believe what they believe because they would have personal experience from God, but because someone else tells them "this is what you should believe". If taken to the extremes we can come up with 'truths' like "God wants you to become a martyr and blow yourself up to kill infidels!" - sound familiar? That's why I regard blind faith and obedience to religious authorities dangerous more than anything else. If YOU genuinely believe in something, fine, but don't take other people's word for it. That's all I'm saying.

Reading this in a forum about a WW2-game is kind of funny. Reaaally funny. There was a austrian born man with a funny moustache who did exactly what you are recommending your readers.</font>

Those kind of sentiments are exactly why I think that organized religion is dangerous more than anything else. You can justify anything with religion. "God Wills It!" and so forth. If you must believe in supernatural, believe in your own beliefs, not what some other man claiming divine authority tells you to believe. Doing the latter has caused more grievances throughout history than anything else I can think of. Btw, Blashy didn't speak about the US today but how it would look like if the Christian fundamentalists were in control like the Islamic fundamentalists are in the Middle East.

True, but I have no problem with people believing in God or by whatever name they choose to call their Deity. The only thing I don't understand is why one should believe in what other men tell them to believe let alone act upon what others tell them is the "Will of God". If you truly believe in God, why do you need a Priest to tell you how to believe? The reason why I have my gripes about (organized) religion is that I don't think there have ever been so many atrocities committed by any other cause than in the name of God.

The "Word" is and was written by Men. I rather endorse the "religion of oneself" than the religion of someone else. For each a religious conviction on his own, not to be told by others what to believe and what action to take. If you truly believe in God, follow His calling, not the words of other men.

Oh I thought the exact opposite, that the majority of the world actually claim the love of God(s) etc. If people started having a clue, maybe there would be a little less fanaticism about it.

I'm bewildered to find those sentences in the same paragraph. :eek:

I thought they were using them already. :confused:

I think the US in particular is full of it. At least up here it's much more moderate - maybe it's the cold temperatures.

But was that build-up directed against Germany, or more likely against Japan, or indeed against anyone?

Needless to say the primary function of subs isn't ship hunting as there are better vessels for that, but convoy raiding. However advanced subs (even L2) can be very deadly against whole surface fleets if used properly. Just don't barge headlong against enemy ships (you'll get squashed) but ambush them. A properly situated group of subs along a convoy lane can devastate a fleet coming after them if you can arrange multiple surprise contacts. Edit: And never ever stand and fight with your subs but withdraw from contact into new ambush positions.

Why would it be unethical or against the rules?

I tried once making the US pro-Axis thinking it would be interesting to see the US fight on the Axis side, but keeping it neutral would do as well. Pumped full diplo on both Germany and Italy into US and avoided any additional DoWs. I even took France through Maginot and never touched the Benelux. Kept my diplo efforts on US constantly at a maximum. I managed to keep them from joining the war until early 1943. But still they managed to invade France already in 1943, the same year they entered. Granted I got unlucky with the dice, only having diplo effect 5 or so times and even at best the US remained something 20+% pro-Allied. But still it felt odd that such a delayed entry makes practically no difference to its capability to wage war. I think I might try it again to see if I get consistent results.

Actually they were thinking about having one here About buying the JSF or not i believe. So for questions like major investmentprojects they could ask to postpone it like 10 years, or continue it now. Not like there's any special knowledge needed for that.</font>

Most of the time the majority of the people don't care to be informed no matter how much you try to inform them. People want to spend time with their hobbies, family and work rather than investigating every political issue. Instead the people can periodically choose who they give the burden of being informed. Those representatives remain accountable to the electorate for their decisions. But if you give a decision to people who know very little or nothing about the given issue, they will be dependant on those who know to be informed - then those who know can manipulate the decision, but they are not accountable to the people who actually made the decision.

The point I was trying to make was that the parties formulating the poll questions want to get something done, they can make the polls such that they offer no real policy alternative, at least not in the key issues. The electorate then becomes a rubber stamp for government policy without any real power to influence it either way. The government decides both the issues and the options under vote. You don't think defense projects require expert knowledge? Referendums can be good in occasional, exceptionally important and influential decisions that should not be taken by a single government. Such might be changes to the country's constitution or membership in an intergovernmental organization (eg. EU or NATO). But those issues are characterized by the fact that they can be formulated into simple YES/NO polls that simply give or deny the government the mandate to do something. You're assuming that given a vote people will always use it. It is true that occasional referendums can be used to inform people about the subject at hand and also make them participate more in the policy making. However if the referendums or elections are too frequent, people will lose interest. Most simply don't want to be politically active all the time. More elections doesn't automatically result in more participation, but just more elections the people don't vote in. See the US for example; they have frequent elections for a plethora of government posts of varying levels of importance. The turnout in most of those elections is very low; the results are dictated by the active minority while the majority abstains, threatening the legitimacy of the whole system - in my country they freak out when the turnout goes below 70%, iirc in the US many elections have barely 30% voter turnout. If the elections are held less often and to a lesser number of posts, the people may actually have the energy to be interested; to find out what the ideologies and past records in office of parties/candidates are before making the decision of who to vote.

The practical power in that would still lie with whoever formulates the poll. The referendum would become little more than a formality or a rubber stamp for the government - especially if the voting is made mandatory. Also the vast majority of decisions taken up by the government require specialist knowledge that you can't possibly imagine the general population to possess - if such a matter is subjected to a referendum, the voters will in turn become subjects for manipulation by the political elite, not being able to form an informed opinion of their own. In direct democracy the elite control the masses. In representative democracy the masses control the elite.