dan/california

The Russian economy will completely implode if these(low) oil prices last eighteen months. It will be detrimentally for affected for most of a decade if they last for a year. Six months they might get away with. If the Iranians and the U.S. reach a deal oil is going a lower still. That would be 500,000 barrels a day in an already saturated market immediately, and probably a great deal more in a few years. Prices could halve again for a while. Russia, and a great many other major exporting countries couldn't cover a quarter of the planned budgets if that happens. It is an argument for giving the Iranians a better deal than makes sense otherwise.

Rubble is denser, with more small pockets, and enough ventilation to reduce overpressure issues. The physics make sense to me.

Nice to know the game is aligned with other sims and exercise results.

This is sort of tangential to this thread, but.... Shock Force was an argument for Strykers, Black Sea is a brutally effective argument against them. Against a Kornet/T-72B3 level threat, being anywhere on a 4k by 4k map is is suicidal. If the map gets smaller it just gets worse. Yes I have said that before, but my current PBEM game is driving the point home.

The U.S. destroyer was not operating under a high threat SOP at that time. In an acknowledged high threat environment anything with certain very broad limits of speed and radar cross section are engaged as fast as they are acquired and the can missiles launched. The problem with operating under this regime is it an excellent way to start a war if there is not one already under way. This has been demonstrated multiple times. Most recently by the idiots that shot down the airliner over Ukraine. The U.S shoot down in the Persian Gulf was another case, many years ago. The U.S. destroyer in the Black Sea was told to assume the Russians didn't want to start a war, and not to start one on its own. Thus all they did was wave to the pilot.

When every dollar you ever made as a company is a couple of zeros short of what the project would cost, the improvements in question cost might as well be on a moon of Saturn. If you could build it, and that is a question mark, it might take a scientific computing cluster to run it. If the Pentagon decided to rain money on BFC it still wouldn't go this way. It is just not happening.

There are a lot of people who would disagree about the just political part, if they weren't dead. If he really wants to end civilization, all he has to do is keep blathering about nukes until someone believes him and shoots first. If I were the Poles I woulds have a full bore secret program underway.

You don't go 16x for spotting. Your field of view would be infinitesimal. You look for unknown targets in a much lower magnification, and switch to 16x when you think you have seen something.

I still like my Amor cover arc idea. If you have an FO, give him a 50 meter arc. Its dead simple, the command already exists, and it is reasonably logical even if you never read a thread about it.

That wasn't H&I, that implies some marginal military utility, it was the intentional terrorizing of an utterly helpless civilian population. The sheer tragedy of Putin setting this kind of war loose to keep him and his friends in Dachas with hot and cold running blondes is simply overwhelming to think about. Especially since a retirement package that included more of both of those things than he could ever make a dent in was negotiable right up until he loosed the Four Horsemen to run run wild through the Donbass. Might still be for that matter, everyone this mess touches will be worse off for at least a generation, no matter who "wins". It would be worth paying him off and installing him in the Swiss Alps somewhere just to make this stupidity stop. Any economic assets worth fighting over are guaranteed to be smoking wreckage by the time the fighting is over.

My biggest point is very simple. We have already invented the Javelin. It works, its amazing, increasing its range can't be that hard. And if you convert, you have actually simplified your logistics situation. Whats not to like?

If the APS stops it, the thing you were trying to kill knows your bearing. Thats a problem. Being able to duck and run the instant your missile is away is a good thing. So is being able to start acquiring the next target.

One of the things the game has been making clear for ages is that recoilless rifles make a ton of sense for infantry support weapons. With a modern sight and airbursting round the 106mm would be truly nasty. The cost per round is probably one percent of a Javelin even with a very fancy fuse. If you side by sided the two on the Hummer replacement you would only have to save one missile to cover the cost. The Javelin is a better missile anyway. Staying in your firing position for the TOW's time if flight is more or less suicidal against first rate opposition.

25mm APDSect will pretty much thru and thru any thing in the game except MBTs, its faster on target, they have more of it, and APS is irrelevant. Rounds going clean thru your vehicle tend to muck up your gunnery. Except at very long range the Bushmaster is probably the better choice. There are always cases where the choice is wrong, happens in the real world, as well.

This has been discussed before quite a bit. What you are asking for MAY be possible. But it would require thousands and thousands of recorded games, many man years of programming, and probably more money for renting a supercomputer cluster than BFC has ever made. I sure that this list is incomplete, but I am quite certain everything on it would be necessary. The resultant AI code might or might not run on a home PC before 2040. Oh, and it might not work. This would really be a blue sky research project more than anything else. I don't think BFCs fantasy Pentagon contract would cover it, in all honesty. The only way it might, maybe work, resource wise, is too corral a bunch of compsci phd candidates into taking on the project. That isn't nearly as simple as it sounds, probably still not cheap, and definitely not quick.

If I may advise and extend my remarks. The difference between co-play and better AI is that the amount of work to get co-play done is a LOT more predictable than AI improvements. It is a large but limited project that can be outlined in detail. To the best of my knowledge the generalized , flexible, AI we would all like to have just doesn't exist anywhere, for any comparable game, period. That means all the time and resources committed to doing it are effectively a very speculative investment that might yield little of no benefit.

Absolutely brilliant!

My only questions about Putin are 1. What name does he plan to adopt at his coronation? 2. his choice of Czarina? 3. Will he try to install one of his daughters as his successor, or does he have an illegitimate son floating around somewhere? He is a little old to bet on lasting long enough to perk an heir from scratch. He wouldn't be the first Monarch in history to "discover" such a son at a convenient moment.

Oh but, but oh, but if only, if they got co-play done right!!!!! The battalion commander would only see what he would actually know, and have to issue orders through his chain of command. So the platoon leaders and up could run a reasonably realistic exercise in a couple of afternoons without burning a hundred thousand dollars in fuel and ammunition. It is certainly not perfect but it teaches what NOT to do in brutally effective way. I know its a ton of programming time, but all you are really doing is customizing the UI to show each leader what he would actually know, and limit his control to the units under his command. The game doesn't need to create any new information that I can see. It is entirely a process of imposing restraints on who can do what. The battalion commander shouldn't even get a mouse. He just gets the map with appropriate FOW and the ability to talk to his subordinates if and how he is in comms. I can dream can't I.

The very big change is APS. Tanks that have have degree of battlefield dominance that hasn't been seen since the invention of the first shaped charges in 42-43. The game illustrates this quite nicely by the way.

The people who know the classified details can't talk about them without nuking their careers. They like this little herd of amateurs, but not that much. And the specifics here are far more public than many of the aircraft based systems, if only because the companies that make the stuff advertise them constantly in pursuit of foreign sales. A lot of the aircraft radar and ECM is a complete black box without the right clearances and a degree in something complicated.

It is a major code rework to get mast mounted weapons and sensors to work. They don't seem to want to take it on anytime soon for a few vehicles in a few situations. The Krys is extremely effective if it is normal hull down, and at least 1500 meters back from the target.

You have to give orders in this game in great detail. You can't just say crawl to the edge of the woods until you can see the road. You have to tell them the exact spot, and pick some waypoints in between if you want to have the slightest chance of them doing it right. The way it works is a compromise to make giving orders bearable. It does reward patience and attention to detail, but most of the time a real battle does, as well.

Near as I can tell with the current modeling in CMBS you have vehicles with APS, and smoking wreckage. That seems to include every single pixelStryker unfortunate enough to come under my command, and not a few my opponents in one of my ongoing PBEMs. There just are no safe places with the reach modern ATGMs. I would be scared bleepless to so much as hit the start button with troops in an AAV.

You know the concept of a warrant officer was invented for a reason. Because some jobs are just too complicated and or important to give to a corporal, yet don't really involve command of other troops. This might be one of those jobs. Maybe before the fiasco, probably afterwards.