dan/california

Clay, you mentioned something a while back about testing a universal binary build that would run on the new Intel Macs. My semester is now sufficiently wrapped up to try it. I'll send you log file after log file, I promise.

Oh I don't know, oil derricks have a distinctly pointy look about them. Our mistake in Nam was not making Mr. Minh a better offer in 48 or so. The French have been so grateful don't you know.

I think the thing that my half of this discussion is trying to say is that the U.S. defeated the Iraqi conventional forces with a casualty rate that was extremely low. Furthermore almost none of those casualties were from heavy units or artillery. Iraqi tanks that moved to contact just died. And the Iraqis had a lot more recent combat experience than the Syrians What are the specific factors that will make the Syrians do better? Peter is right about U.S. players getting reminded of the laws of physics early on, but then what happens once the U.s.payer gets his tactics straight? I don't recall the Iraqi version of the jeep rush working very well.

Of course more info from Battlefront would simplify this discussion immensely. Please, something, anything, lies, statistics, misinformation. Hmm those are synonyms.

Peter I am just working from things that TAC-OPS 4 have taught me. And If I have drones and artillery and thermal vision and you don't. You had better have a whole lot of tank crews willing to become barbecue of the most unpleasant kind. Are their scenarios where the Syrians could hurt the U.S. a little, sure. But the U.S. army has had this little three year training exercise in Iraq to sort out the truly stupid people tactically. And I am sure the Israelis would be more than delighted to provide endless, detailed military intelligence even if they did nothing else. They have been keeping extremely detailed tabs on the Syrian OOB for 30-40 years at least. And they have the Pentagons Email, hell the Israelis probably read the Pentagon's email before the Pentagon does. And if you were Assad would you bet all of your forces on the Israelis not settling accounts once and for all. I mean I am going to buy the game, and I am going to play the game. Hell, I just bought a new computer for Drop Team and this. But the scenario info Battlefront has released so far just makes me scratch my head harder and harder. It would not have been my first choice, or second.

Check out this link for the Dragon Eye UAV. This is the kind of stuff i just cannot see the Syrians dealing with in a stand up fight. Figuring out which guy is wearing the suicide vest is a harder thing to do. But every T72 and ATGM that this thing sees is going to be in line for immediate attention. http://www.defense-update.com/products/d/dragoneyes.htm

I may be beating this drum to loudly, and if so I apologize. But are there any credible sources about the state of the Syrians night vision equipment? If one side has 2000 meters more visibility than the other. Then even the best defensive cover and planning is only going to help so much. You still have tanks and fighting positions blowing up with no idea of what killed them. Even in day time if you can lay smoke that you can see through but the enemy cannot it makes a ridiculous difference to the force balance. On a related note, has Battlefront said if the new precision guided 155 and mortar rounds are going to be in or not? I am deeply curious to play with and with out them. A 120 mm mortar with a >3m CEP for the first shot would really make life hard on defensive infantry emplacements. If there is an effective anti armor round that would be even harder to counter. Theoretically the victory conditions and or point values can take all of this into account. But even if trading a Syrian battalion for two American armored vehicles is considered a victory I can't imagine it would be whole lot of fun to play. Which I think is the short version of the point that a lot of people are trying to make. I like the idea of actually laying out the probable invasion path Peter. These arguments are even more fun when their are more details to chew over. And if the designers will not provide them then we will have to do it ourselves. A deeper understanding of the choke points and terrain obstacles would definitely improve the level of this conversation. Of course Battlefront could just surrender unconditionally and at least promise a Taiwan expansion pack.

We still have not answered one of my main points. And while everything peter said is valid, units with good night vision slaughter units without it. and this is before all the new small drones the U.S. is deploying are taken into account. I seem to recall that even during GW1 that tanks in the desert stand out like beacons on IR. And their are so many more toys to reach out and touch them with when that happens now. Occupation is a different story. But in a stand up fight I am just not convinced that the Syrian military is gong to accomplish a whole lot. I mean the Israelis have hammered them without mercy any number of times.

Attacking against even slightly dug in infantry with javelin quality atgms is simply impossible at any time of day or night unless you have overwhelming artillery support available. Otherwise those missiles take out at least one tank for every two shots. And every American soldier in Iraq has faced the elephant. The only tank panic would be the Syrians panicking about running out of tanks. The Syrians have at most 3000 tanks that would move under their own power before the air force drops pgm #1. How many Syrian tanks would even manage to move to contact? I guarantee their would be enough javelins to go around. Their would be lots of complications to taking out Syria. Its armored divisions are not very high on the list. I REALLY think the designers should have gone with the Taiwan scenario. There I can believe a standup fight. Syria is Iraq 2, easy to take but miserable to hold without either a lot more troops than we have committed to Iraq so far or the willingness to use Saddam's methods. Of the you won't do that again because your all dead variety.

Simpler question. Do the Syrian T72s have thermal imaging systems that are maintained and working? The javelin I am morally certain has a very good one. If the Syrians don't have good night vision equipment the Americans just rest during the day and have somewhat dangerouse target practice at night. T72s would be brewing up all over the map with no idea what killed them. Have you ever played Tac Ops when one side has all the electronic toys and one doesn't? It is a turkey shoot with bigger targets.

Well the other thing that put me over the top was assurances from five separate sources that boot camp works and you can install XP on it too if you futz with the installation enough. Wether you finish the binary before I finish the installation is an open question. But it is a much better problem than staring at a machine that just cannot possibly run the game.

Well folks you get the credit for Putting me over the top on a new 20 inch IMac with intel. Clay you should call Apple and demand a commission, you should also call my wife and tell her your sorry. I hope to be demonstrating my tactical incompetence by late next week.

Don't feel bad, I can't spell everyday.

My only question then is why the 120mm AP won't shoot through a thor lengthwise and go several hundred meters into the mountain behind it. It is a question of relative, not absolute effectiveness.

I would have to agree with the relative effectiveness school of thought here. What ever is making the 20mm more effective would also be applied to make the 120mm more effective in the absence of a specific reason otherwise. That explanation is not presented in any of the game materials yet. If the 120mm AP was capable of blowing through any and all of the armor in use it seems to me that the gun designers would trade penetration for more frag damage or do something else with the round to enhance lethality at the expense of penetration. In the absence of a one shot kill capability the 120mm as currently configured does not seem to be a very viable choice. I would go very heavy with ATGM vehicles for long range with many 20mm ones for short range under current rules. A very slow vehicle with a low rate of fire must have a one shot kill capability, or why pick it? ever? Maybe the 120mm needs a shotgun/cannister style round that will just waste light vehicles at close range. That wwould really make the lighter guys think twice about trying to get close. A fair number of 20mm size munitions would fit inside a 120mm round and the initial velocity would be as least as high as the 120mm. It would fall off quick in atmosphere, but so what. Need it for infantry anyway, when they show up.

I would say that proof of concept is here. I would not be brave enough to run the currently available code on my own brand new toy, but yes it looks like it is going to work. Could we discuss a small to medium sized loan.

I think it would be fantastic to have realistic foog of war as long as units have the abosoulte minimum AI sense to duck take cover and shoot back. Units behaving in a really suicidal and unreasonable way would take the fun out of it pretty quick. But otherwise the Syrian player starting the scenario with good intel and the americans having the benefit of better command and control would be great. The pucker factor really picks up when you tell a unit to do something with no idea of what is on the other side of that wall. Greatly improves the importance of doing everything right with smoke as well, as partially mentioned above. Again as said above, real world tactics were invented to deal with real world command and control problems. So if you want real world tactics....

Machine Model: iMac CPU Type: PowerPC G4 (2.1) Number Of CPUs: 1 CPU Speed: 700 MHz L2 Cache (per CPU): 256 KB Memory: 512 MB Bus Speed: 100 MHz Boot ROM Version: 4.3.4f2 Serial Number: QT209023MQH and 32 mb video card I am currently running 10.3.9 and the game won't run, if I was to buy 10.4.x would there be any hope? I just cannot drop $1500 on a new computer right now, and I really want too wait and see if the new intel macs will dual boot anyway. But I really , REALLY, want to play. I would cheerfully turn everything down to absoulute minimum, I just don't want to buy 10.4 and it still not work. I really don't need 10.4 for anything else.

The difference between the V22 and the Commanche is that ther is already a very mature and effective technology out there to do what the Commanche was intended to do. It is called a drone, and as near as I can determine the U.S. is buying them as fast as they can be built. Therefore there is no NEED for the Commanche. The V22 may or may not be the perfect solution to the operational requirement it was built to fill, but there is nothing else I am aware of that can fill the role as well. I don't have access to enough of the engineering data to say if its intial problems have been fixed or not. But if it works it will be useful. The fact that anything under 5000 feet and five hundred knots seems to way to vulneable to even basic modern infantry weapons is somethinng the Military has not thought all the way thru yet. The U.S. is going to keep taking unnessacary casulties until they do.

Unfortunately the whole Taiwan invasion issue would turn on the relative effectiveness of U.S. EW systems vs Chineese missles, I dont have the back ground to really analyze the question but as a Navy EW officer in another forum I read put it. "That is what we think about all day, every day", for better or worse it is also almost all "if we tell you we have to shoot you classified" . That means the discussion is very theoretical and going to stay that way. As a back story to a CMSF module though it means that almost any backstory can be reasonably justified in terms of who starts where with how much of what. Which should allow the creation of reasonably even scenarios, if Battlefront will bite the bullet and put the Chineese in the game. They HAVE TO DO THAT DON'T THEY, I MEAN THEY REALLY, REALLY HAVE TO DO THAT. I Hope

More about Hezbollah than you wanted to know, except for a miltary TO&E blast it. www.intelligence.org.il/eng/bu/hizbullah/aabst_f.doc

I'll answer the justificaation question just as soon as someone hands me an OSX beta version.

What you gain by adding Hezbollah is a much more disciplined force. They probably have the best trained, best led light to medium infantry in the Arab world. The equipment may not be much different but they will use it to its limits, which is true of virtually no other Arab army. Would that stop a competently led American or Israeli combined arms team from rolling over them? No, but it would be considerably more expensive than grinding up and spitting out the same number of troops from virtually anywhere else in the Arab world. And trust me, this is coming from someone who would not lose one minutes sleep if the U.S. and/or Israel did just that. But underestimating the opposition is how you get the important bits chewed off. Hezbolla is dangerous, Oren may have easier acces to many of the details if he is reading this thread.

There was a great Mythbusters on a lot of these bullet impact issues and how wrong Hollywood has them. They took an approximately man weight pig(dead), put a completely bullet proof somthing around it to ensure that the rounds didn't blow thru and was thus guaranteed to transfer all of it's momentum to the target, and hung it on a straight bar. They then proceeded to shoot it with every thing up to a Barret 50 cal and they may have used one of those too. End result, the pig barely twitches much less blows back. All caught on high speed camera ect., very good stuff.

On a completely different subject. A number of precision guided mortar rounds of various types seem to be just coming into or about to come into service. I am strictly an interested amatuer but these strike me as enormously effective force multipliers under the direct control of battalion and company commanders. Will these be in the game or will it be possible to mod them into the game relatively easily for experimentation purposes?