vincere
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Posts posted by vincere
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Yeah, not too much time to spend on this right now. Some things I did not mention above:
2. The things I noted above were posted in a private discussion area and I only reposted the "vetted" ones here. Still likely some mistakes as this is war and reporting is imperfect, but I wanted at assure you guys that these are not just blind reposts of twitter statements or blog postings.
Steve
Thank you again Steve. You've really fired my interest to do more research and reading myself, and probably start my own notes in times of tension and conflict.
You appear to have really gotten into researching this, and dare I say a real interest in Modern combat scenarios now.
Re 2. Without sounding sycophantic, you, as many do on your forum, always come across as though you do your homework and think before talking ;-)
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I was thinking the same. I know from my own game experience that does not end well....
What causes deep discomfort; pain even, is how quickly the British Army forgets lessons that have previously been paid for in blood.
I'd anticipate that any medium to high intensity conflict would see early losses through forgotten lessons and a steep learning curve.
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+1 And I don't even wear glasses and sit desk close to a 23inch
But this has been requested by a decent length thread years ago. ?:-/
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The gif is a beautiful addition. Thats a new trick isn't it?
It is! Really brings the AAR to life.
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You guys might be interested in this.
August 24
25. More shelling and attacks of areas to Ukraine's rear. Olenivka, Andriivka, Liubivka, Volnovakha and others reported.
I'm going to stop there.
Steve
If you have time please paste your notes and summary of the Russian involvement beyond this date.
Some very interesting and " New to me" data in your posts that is very much appreciated, especially as I can anticipate that you are busy.
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That doesn't happen on RT because it is a government mouthpiece, I'm convinced it was created solely to troll foreigners anyway. I'm not aware of anyone who watches this station, I'm not even sure I have it. Believe it or not we do have news that is critical of the current government, though I must admit I, like most my age and younger (I'm nearly 40) don't watch the news, other than sports maybe. You also need to look at Russian news from the frame of reference of a Russian - it is hard to find a Russian who is not cynical about mainstream news or one who believes they are getting the truth or at least the entire truth. I don't think there has been a time in this country's history where the news has been trustworthy or trusted. Discounting and not trusting the news is part of the culture.
Two things
1. Yes, I believe that most Russians have a distinct overall culture; but also many sub and geographical cultures. Which is another reason why I'd like to hear more from everyday Russians about their perspectives.
2. Reassuring to hear that critical thinking is flourishing. I can understand it being strong in Russia, give its history. That said, having critical thoughts and having the ability to demonstrate them publically can be worlds apart.
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Western media also criticises the current and past governments. That does not happen on RT.
RT- I catch it because it does show military clips that are not on other channels. But the shear level and constant output of anti-western does concern me. Especially as they dress up wacky conspiracy theories as documentary-news.
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You don't even need to take the American's word for it, just go to liveleak and try to identify the Russian vehicles. I haven't done that in a while, but a while ago I saw what looked like a BTR-80A/BTR-82A, which Ukraine doesn't have. I'm sure you can find more Russian vehicles, like the new tanks that entered Ukraine recently.
Russians been there so long they're likely to start showing on google maps.
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I think its great, adds some flavor to the AAR and you may care just a bit more about those pixel troops in it!
Agreed, the creative back story and characterisation is really immersive and fun to read.
Thanks for taking time with this.
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Ha, I went through the same angst as CMBN came close to release and I have upgraded again since.
The problem with ignoring that group is CMBS forces have a way of punishing you severely for any mistakes. I think Bil needs to batter that force fast while he can. If not he faces having to fight two battles at once and that will not end well. He'll have a force buried in his rear with potential LOS/LOF on his units defending from the other force. You know Scott will work those force in coordination so his recon will be spotting for opportunities for his surrounded force to strike.
I was thinking that he could go for a quick destruction/ routing of Ukrainian forces in a broad swathe from the Power Station to the Service station. This would secure the South East and give him a secure rear.
Set units for delaying action of relief force while he infiltrates the town. And holding the Power Station may give him flanking opportunities if the relief force passes on a northern approach.
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That was a cool video. I hope we get to see that equipment in CMBS with a future module.
The clip won't give us a decent picture to current doctrine and practices for facing a high anti-armour threat.
That said, in parts of it vehicles were scarily clustered and gave the impression of assumed dominance that I could not help thinking recent asymmetric wars may have left ingrained in some way.
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As for 3, it is a bit off topic, but state pension funds are being 'borrowed' from to bring Crimean infrastructure and administration up to the RF standard, which is not an incredibly high standard. By all accounts though things were ignored completely in Crimea and now must be fixed all at once, mainly for political reasons. Already low pensions have been in some cases lowered or in most cases frozen, despite coming inflation. It is an unfortunate situation.
That's a fairly huge one.
Not completely off topic. From war-game scenario view it could be adding pressure to Russia for a quicker 'win'.
edited, and thank you for taking time to provide some information that's not so mainstream news.
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I live in Russia and am not what some one would call a supporter of the Russian government, and completely disagree with the annexation of Crimea- (it has nearly destroyed the Russian domestic tourism industry with the government trying to pressure companies to convince people to visit Crimea, it lead to the bankruptcy of several long standing tour companies.) As well as many other economic hardships that aren't even connected to the diplomatic spats over sanctions I must tell you - Yelena Vasilyeva is an awful, awful source to use, as well as censor.net.ua.
It seems that you are using sources that are definitely skewed one way that are not fully trustworthy (which is typical on all sides) It is the same as reading a report from Motorola that his unit destroyed 20 enemy tanks in 15 minutes (a common report) and taking it as the truth.
I could list plenty of stuff from the other point of view (with the same level of reputation of the sources you posted) that are going to say completely different things. I guess it boils down to this, if you are convinced of a certain narrative - you are going to believe those sources.
Edit: As a side, Steve since you are an administrator, could you tell me why to access any BF page no matter where I am trying to access it from I must use VPN software and change my IP to outside of Russia?
1. I live in the West, and would love to hear much more from independent Russian sources. So please do post anything when you can.
2. Agreed it is difficult sometimes to screen out the propaganda, personal, and sociological biases. But many of us prefer the truth so strive to balance these and be as objective as possible.
3. "As well as many other economic hardships that aren't even connected to the diplomatic spats over sanctions". Please do tell us, or list examples of the other economic impact.
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Dropped from lurking with the pop-corn. Dig in guys.
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Thanks Mark. AI ok at it's own force picking now? Last I played QB was ShockForce.
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Haven't picked up RT yet. But am wondering what the state of Quick Battles against the AI are like?
The reasons I'm interested in QB are
1. I prefer Infantry vs Infantry.
2. A lot of the old scenarios used to often feel so scripted to be puzzle like. Prefer more open play.
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Nam never goes out of fashion.
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Awesome tool. I get a lot of satisfaction from looking at game stats like this.
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I think we also need to get clear what a commitment of reserves on the CM scale is going to look like. Local reserves, which are the ones most likely to show up at all during a CM fight, are probably not going to amount to more than a platoon, even in a battalion sized defensive battle. You aren't very likely going to get a Panzer battalion coming to your rescue. You aren't in most cases going to get any armor at all in less than several hours. In the case of an offensive battle, you might get all kinds of stuff, but that would be a matter less of committing reserves to salvage a deteriorating situation than the preplanned second echelon putting in its scheduled attack. No triggers needed. The scenario designer can already implement that. Unscheduled commitment of reserves, which in the case of needing reinforcement to keep an attack going would have to come from a level higher than regiment/brigade, would take a lot of time to order and get moving. Then after they get moving, it would take some amount of time for them to get where they are needed. Even granting the time compression that occurs in CM, this looks to me like more an operational than a tactical issue.
What the creative scenario designer could do is to begin the battle with an already faltering attack that has suffered heavy casualties, is low on ammo, is weary, etc. and than have the reinforcements show up some length of time well into the first hour and then take it from there. You could also have the defense getting a small reinforcement of fresh troops a little sooner so that the battle might see-saw back and forth.
Michael
Yeah, that sew-saw, or at least keeping the battle competitive is a good idea. Could really make long battles interesting.
Another idea about reinforcing apparent non success occurred to me. The different scales of analysis. Say operationally the attack is looking successful, but a tactical component is taking heavy losses. However that territory is important to the overall attack, and within that territory there are key terrain that costing a heavy price. The heavy price is bitter, and can look like failure but that key terrain still needs taking so reserves are committed to pay the price. Tractor factor in Stalingrad springs to mind.
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However, someone like me who comes to it more from the point of view of the amateur historian might not be entirely comfortable with it. Doctrine varied across armies and practice often varied within armies, but it was usually not thought a good idea to reinforce failure. At least not on the attack. On defense, you might well send reinforcements to a sector of your front where an enemy breakthrough seemed imminent in order to contain it until the front could be stabilized. But on the attack, it makes more sense to commit the reserves where the attack is going well and a breakthrough is either close at hand or already achieved. Between two players, that might not seem fair, but then as somebody said, "Strategy is the art of never having to fight fair."
Michael
Yes, theory. There's so many variables that on CM's tactical level it's not worth worrying about whether reinforcements to keep an attack operation game viable is viable historically.
Shooting from the hip:
Theory- hey even the best most widely accepted theory/ principals are far from universally practised.
Fog of War. Who knows that an attack has truly failed. The next echelon will surely break them now.
Some theories conflict.
Overlapping levels of conflict. Keeping the 'failing' attack going on the tactical level, is paying dividends on the operational level. eg keeping their unit tied, a communication route unusable, or the diversion feint going.
We can implement that exact theory with the newly released reserves. On the tactical level we will not reinforce that costly failure area of the map, but the area where we've been having success.
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As a "would love to have" it would be great to be able to call on reinforcements - at the cost of a Victory Point penalty...
IIRC CM1 Campaigns/Operations had three levels of reinforcements - each would be automatically activated and brought on map if one's situation became bad enough. IIRC there were Battalion, Regimental and Divisional level reinforcements available - all triggered by the player doing increasingly poorly.
IIRC, if you were doing well, these reinforcements were never triggered and would not arrive. Unfortunately, I cannot recall how the scoring was affected by these reinforcements being triggered. It was a very sophisticated concept made useful by the fact that one could have huge scenarios in CM1 - eg a regiment of infantry plus a battalion of armor plus dozens of other asssorted AFV's.
Am really hoping that CM2 East Front will be a return to those sorts of challenging scenarios where mobility and armor become predominant. Am getting very bored with the mostly infantry slog battles we have had in CMBN and CMFI.
Awesome idea, and something that would really help unofficial operations on the larger maps.
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Playing on large maps invites larger forces. Then you have to manage very many units. It would be nice to be able to take the AI planning module in the scenario editor, and apply it to troops on your own side. This would allow one to fight bigger battles while gaining some assistance with the managing of so many unit orders. Even better if you can do this on the fly in the actual game. Meaning designate "Orders" groups (like AI groups) for friendly forces, paint Plans on the map and give some of the same options as the AI order. then you can control many companies of troops in this fashion, jumping in where needed.
Los
That is outstanding idea. Set plans at start. Amend plans by calling Orders group with company/platoon HQs.
HQ out of contact or MIA, then no orders for them!
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Of course. I'm with you there. Just don't kid yourself that these battles have much to do with WWII. They're more like 1990s/2000s combat, that happen to use 1940s equipment.
In many situations yes. Many others less so. But heck we could be hyper critical and say that about all of them.
Time compression, casevac, ammunition expenditure per KIA on and on.
Nothing wrong with small maps in themselves, just the tactical options open up or are different with larger ones. And my largest hope is for some kind of player input for an operational scope. Alas, all hopes are on an ap that looks like it'll require manual transfer of data. In the meantime some large map based operations will be appreciated. :-)
ukraine military vs russia
in Combat Mission Black Sea
Posted
Ukraine will hold a referendum on joining Nato
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-30176256
From the article: "Ukraine has been fighting pro-Russian separatists for most of the year"
Which reminds me, I think media in UK has been downplaying Russian involvement. I wonder whether there's powers behind this as the economies can't take another shock.