cool breeze

Of course I wouldn't give up my citizenship to move to Russia. If for whatever reason I had to choose between fighting for one of those (which would be terrible) it would be Assad because then I'm at least not (being a terrorist) trying to topple another middle eastern nation, I think we all know how that works out. The whole the West is good and Russia is bad so anytime we can fight them anywhere is good it old hat and tired. To me you justifying us spending more of our tax dollars trying to topple yet another nation in that area right after the last one went to **** after we toppled it, is in much more moral gray area than anything I have said, by far At least last time we had the honor to actually invade and put ourselves on the line to topple the government vs funding terrorism.

Yeah well said HerrTomm. I haven't really been trying to argue with any of the fact at hand, everyone is making very valid points for the most part, and the arguments for why what Russia has been doing is wrong have been largely hitting home. But as much as it all moves my heart for the suffering of Eastern Europe, the discussion seemed to need a bit of perspective balance injected into the discourse. We don't seem to me to have really entered the age where governments are actually expected to do what they see as best for the world at large. They seem to me more just expected to try to make it seem that way. And yeah it would be great if things were different, and we should try to change things by calling bad actions out when we see them, like most people here have been doing about Russia. But if what we are trying to do is bring about a new age where governments are actually all about doing the "right thing" then it seems that in the same breath that we say that Russians should stop "supporting a rebellion" Ukraine we should probably also say the US should stop "supporting a rebellion" in Syria.

Ok this is a little silly but has anyone here read Dune? They have a very stable seeming system for nuclear control. Every Great House (basically nation) has a secret stash of nuclear missiles. The Houses war with each other regularly, but the wars never go nuclear because the Houses all have an agreement that if anyone shoots any nukes at anyone, everyone nukes them to glassify their planet/ all their planets. But non of the houses have enough nukes to individually nuke the planets of ALL of the Houses. No reason for them to even be able to glassify a single planet by themselves. There is nothing wrong with needing multiple countries to use their nukes together in order to wipe out most of the populace of just one nation.

Yup. I believe strongly in the right to self defense. And that means to me the right to defend ones selves with the weapons of the age, modern weapons. For individuals that means guns, for nations that means tanks, and planes, and ships, and submarines,.... and namely Nukes. But just like an individual doesn't need a whole closet full of guns and thousands of rounds for self defense (although there is nothing wrong with having it! feel free to invite me out shooting ) a nation doesn't normally need 10s of nation destroying salvos of nuclear missiles for self defense. But the cold war was different. As I said people have a right to self defense, and the American people were faced with the existential threat of both world wide communism, and nuclear annihilation. So right or wrong we were justified to make such a huge armament of nukes, and sort of even justified to make the CIA the huge out of control beast sowing chaos and destruction world wide. We had to fight the commies all over the world by any means necessary. But once the USSR collapsed and we won it was no longer justified to keep those things going. The fact that we did keep them going basically full throttle gives the Russian populace very legitimate reason to feel like we are still going for that unconditional surrender we always wanted.

Well said Hattori! I wasn't talking about working out a nuke reduction deal withRussia, I was talking about unilaterally reducing our arsenal to be only able to kill maybe half of the worlds population in one go. Or maybe we could just be able to nuke the worlds bigger capital cities to dust. I think being able to threaten 10 percent of a populace with instant destruction is enough, no need to threaten the whole country. As a patriot on a wargame forum, I was NOT arguing we should stop having a strong military or even by far the best in the world, just that I think the time for us having SO MUCH nukes and covert operations should be past. Edit to add: And sure, yeah, AFTER we go somewhere and destroy the established power structure, and then fill the void ourselves, and then leave the area, leaving a power void, things get worse. shouldn't be a surprise. Doesn't really mean we should be intervening everywhere in the first place.

Time destroys all things

Right, but Russia only wants to confront us because we are everywhere in the world because we consider it all to be our sphere of influence. If we were minding our own business we'd be low on the priorities list. I was aware of the post cold war change in out military posture, but that seems more like just turning our nations proverbial cross-hair towards the Middle East and Asia while containing their currently preoccupied with its getting their **** together old enemy. If we were to actually try to end the cold war we'd have to actually reduce our nuclear arsenal and scale back the CIA. And maybe stop acting like we run the world.

Right, I know this isn't supposed to be about listing random bad things other countries have done, but I entered into the discussion by saying that I think some of the whataboutism stuff is valid, because of the continuing cold war perspective of a life or death struggle between "East (Russia)" and West. I think its still a valid perspective because our nations spending priorities haven't changed much since the cold war. And I think we should take responsibility for our role in keeping things that way. If we don't want to be seen as continuing this (east vs west) struggle we shouldn't be spending so much on nukes or having cold war warriors like McCain going to meet "far right" groups, particularly right before all hell breaks loose.

Russian "congress" authorized it in much the same way, no? and add 1900's and 2000's. Countries are supposed to protect their people from foreign aggression. That is definitely a legitimate goal for a government. Trying to save the whole world from itself at gunpoint to spread "peace and democracy* " is a less well "historically justified" as legitimate thing for a government to be doing. Russia is justified as a people to be paranoid of the west and to see our advances as a potentially mortal threat. In a sense no project in the history of mankind has had so much treasure invested in it as the west's, chiefly America's, project to be able to kill all the ruskies as quickly as possible if "need be". We are also famously accomplished at successful hard and soft power sneaky dealing that start wars and overthrow governments. Did anyone in America actually feel threatened by Iraq?

You're basically saying that the American Revolution was the beginning of a downward spiral to world wide anarchy.... vs. one of the best things that ever happened .

Every country has a sphere of influence. I'm not saying countries should support violent revolutions/ civil wars, I think they shouldn't. But I am saying that it makes more sense to be writing to our congress people and newspapers to try to stop America's support of the Syria rebels than to argue with the few Russians on the forum about how bad their government is.

thanks Been lurking here since CMBB and still under 1k posts so I gotta make em count

Yeah reinforcements seems a bit overdue for Vlad for a while... I figured the topic would just die and I could just hold me tongue but he kept fighting and fighting. But now that I got myself in it feel free to argue with me about any of it. I think I kept my case pretty reasonable and moderate. Although I might have used too broad of brushstrokes to indicate that in some instances. And I wasn't saying Putin thought he had to do it to avoid losing all his popularity and be thrown out of office, just that he likely would have lost a lot of his popularity, and would almost certainly be less popular (with his people) than he is now. You are right that the things you mentioned show his people that he is fighting for them harder than his predecessor, but that doesn't mean they wouldn't be upset if they saw him as letting them get taken advantage of by the west (again) with no response, on their border, any time.

I don't hear someone say they disagree with ALL of my post very often Variety is the spice of life, that made me chuck. 'Ill just assume that doesn't include the Russia is huge bit or the war is bad part

And I'm not trying to say Russia is more justified than the west or the USA or Ukraine or anything like that. I don't think anyone is arguing about who's more justified than who, although maybe you are. You can't really get more justified than defending your sovereign territory, so the Ukraine's got that. And I root for the USA (and the world , and peace, we should all just get along and be friends). But as long as we have a huge line up of nuclear missiles aimed at Russia its fair for them to consider it a life or death struggle and act accordingly. Not saying its right or smart just that its justified and fair.

OK, uh oh, I'm gonna bite. Russia isn't the only country to spend a lot of "unnecessary" money/productivity on making sure it has "nuclear war potent" force as a deterrent to nuclear war. The USA leads the pack of many nations that spend much effort and treasure making sure their military will be effective in a conventional war and a full spectrum/nuclear war. Basically I think the VDV makes sense for Russia because 1) Russia is huge enough that flying things around makes sense as a time saver. Sometimes. 2) To be survivable on a potentially nuclear battle field, the army would deploy very deep and unconcentrated. VDV lets you quickly add mass where needed. 3) Russia seems a little obsessed with the reconnaissance strike complex, it makes sense that they would be scared of ours. Its easy to imagine the west hitting Russia's transportation net with some long range strikes and that could potentially jam up the train and road net pretty bad, but its pretty hard to shut down all of a nations unimproved airstrip capability. 4) Although I see all the really strong reasons why a modern offensive airdrop might be easily destroyed, I'm not sure the huge WW2 examples are entirely applicable, I think dropping mechanized infantry with IFVs makes it maybe a different enough thing to be an apples and oranges comparison, with the oranges untested. I been really enjoying the discussion, but I gotta say I think "y'all" been giving Vlad a bit too hard of a time, although it is good to argue hard. I think hes been really good about agreeing with y'all about the facts, and admitting he was wrong when shown he was. Seems like his points generally aren't really fully at odds with what you guys are saying yet nobody wants to give validity to any of it. I think in general the whataboutism stuff is totally valid, and just because we aren't having a foreign adventure "right now", oh wait we are, doesn't mean it isn't totally hypocritical for our government to complain about the Russian government doing that sort of thing. Just because we aren't currently invading anybody in this new electronical golden age of politically correct "world peace" doesn't mean governments are all of a sudden going to stop being Machiavellian. Like if we are just going to call bad bad then fine, war is bad, and the war in the Ukraine is bad, and Russia makes it keep going so that is bad, ok. But I don't think Vlad is even trying to argue with that. I think he is saying its justified. It's justified by what the USA has done all over the world and particularly the Americas. It's justified by the cold war. Its pretty reasonable for the Russians to be paranoid about the west considering how much money we have spent over the years to be able to kill them, and our long history of doing sneaky revolution starting stuff all over the world. Whether or not the West actually helped instigate the violent revolution that deposed the pro Russian president to replace him with a pro western one, it is the furthest thing from surprising that the average Russian would blame the west and see it as yet another attempt to steal some of their sphere of influence. Whether or not it was in fact a plot by the west that made it happen, in a sense Putin had to do something to show his people he would not be walked all over like his predecessor, and would instead do what ever sort of "well precedent-ed by the USA" things he can do to defend his country (which includes its sphere of influence). Even if Putin knew it was not a plot he might have felt he had to do it to stay popular because the people would believe what they wanted, which was: the West did it. P.S. Justified as in precedent, not as in Justice

I think there is a "ctrl + s"or something to save

This gave me an idea. one could use the handcap slider to REDUCE the AIs point to spend, and then spend even a little less of that yourself.

I meant direct fire. Isnt that what everyone is talking about with target briefly and target light? but yeah a spotter will try track a moving target

I like the low rate of fire target light with small mortars over target briefly because you get more rounds on target vs. spotting rounds, and you get the suppressive fire all turn long. And it works better on moving target because they readjust after every shell fall?

You could bring back the old command delay but only for area fire and only if the troop has no contact info in the area. although planning the area fire order ahead by adding it to a way point should start the command delay countdown before getting to the way point, or at least reduce it.

I use slow for vehicles mostly to keep pace with my infantry, but there is rare rare CM quirk that gives one other reason to use it. CM models the suspension rock of an accelerating tank (probably over models), Im pretty sure Ive seen the sudden stop of a hunt move ending make the barrel drop at just the wrong time and the shot went low.

And BTW I know the UKR BTR4 will sometime shoot missiles but it should be more and they should volley fire more.

The Oplot rotating bug is the worst. The BMP2m LOD issue bugs me way more than it should, and it would be cool if the IFV's besides Bradleys would shoot missiles more.

If you wanted to do the same sort of test but reduce the roll of fudge factors to a minimum, you could give the shooter a height advantage to reduce the micro terrain, and make the whole thing pavement to reduce the micro terrain. Comparing it with shooting at a window makes sense too. Unfortunately they both seem like a lot of work.