Drusus
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Posts posted by Drusus
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I take it that either they are having too much fun playing the game and thus have no time to answer here or that this silence means that there is going to be _the_ announcement soon.
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Are things going as planned?Originally posted by Moon:Early 2006
4-6 weeks earlier in 2006
I am really, really waiting for this game. I know the policy of "when it is done", but I would just like some kind of status update, if possible. Like is the biggest problems at the moment in the balancing of the game or is there major issues still to be fixed? If this is anything I hope and believe this game to be, I think I am going to spend a lot of time playing this game.
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From Young & Freedman, University Physics, 9th edition, page 238:
What this means is that in calculating the knock down effect of the bullet the energy doesn't matter. The bullet stays in the body (inelastic) or even worse, goes through. What happens to the energy? It does a lot of internal damage to the target, thus there is a lot of deformation. Interestingly enough if you fire at the 2" steel plate, then the energy does matter, as the collision isn't inelastic. It isn't compeletely elastic either (nothing in reality is) so calculating the end result without knowing the speed of the bullet after the collision isn't possible.In any collision, momentum is conserved and the total momentum before equals the total momentum after; in elastic collision only, the total kinetic energy before equals the total kinetic energy after.As to the catching ball effect, I think there is two things that matter here. First is human anatomy which I don't know much about and the second is the thing that the thrower is applying the force to the ball a lot longer than the catcher, thus it doesn't hurt the thrower. The thing is that the energy does matter, but it doesn't matter in the end speed of the catcher + ball in any way, if the collision is inelastic.
Actually I think what happens is that with firm hands, the energy goes to a lot bigger area and your muscles are absorbing it. In the soft hands case the energy is able to do damage which hurts. Like punching somebody in the stomach when he is ready for it vs when suprised. The latter knocks you down as in bullet knocking somebody down.
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Peter,
First, acceleration is measured in m/(s*s). And as velocity is acceleration*time, you can't just put velocity in the place of acceleration, unless the time in question is 1 second. I say the force is there for 0.002 seconds. And thus the acceleration is 500000 m/s^2. And the force is 10 kN with 0.02 kg bullet. With 0.004 kg bullet it is 2 kN.
While the energy doesn't matter in the knocking down effect, the energy of the bullet is the thing that makes the damage. Modern guns have high velocities with small bullets, and thus they get large amounts of energy delivered with small recoil. If you double the speed of the bullet but make it half the weight, the momentum of the bullet remains the same, but the energy is doubled. If you manage to get a lot of angular energy to the bullet, still better, as this only causes the gun to twist a bit.
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Well, I bought some underwear meant to keep you warm and used them during the last cold months of my service. While it helped the problem is still the same. For example I was in mortar platoon, so if we happened to advance on foot during the shooting (luckily this is usually avoided) we had to first walk around with our "light" 81mm mortar and then run to the firing positions. Then we sit there for 30 minutes and do practically nothing. And this is nice during summer. During winter you are absolutely freezing. First you sweat and you have problems with overtemperature, then when you stop you are freezing.
The biggest problem is feet and hands. Actually for me the biggest problem was writing. It is really slow to write when you don't feel much with your hands due to the coldness and at the same time you try to write as fast as possible to get your mittens back on. As a platoon leader I had to write a lot of stuff. The other problem is feet, they get easily wet, and after that it doesn't matter how high tech clothes you have. We usually carried a lot of replacement socks with us if we knew we were going to walk long distances. And you keep your water under your clothes to keep it warm. These are little things that make your life easier during the cold winter days.
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I don't think water consumption is a big problem in arctic conditions, except for that keeping the water from freezing is critical. Bigger problem IMHO is that when you do things (like move fast or dig a fox hole) you tend to get hot. And when you start waiting for something to happen you will get cold fast. The problem is that you need vastly different clothing for different situations. When on the move the right equipment is wind stopping but else light (I usually had only the normal summer jacket + t-shirt + sharpnel west) but if you stop for a pause with this equipment you will turn cold _fast_. On the other hand I had something like 5 layers of clothing when doing the usual guarding stuff. Actually the most I had was something like t-shirt, long shirt, another thick long shirt, jacket, sharpnel west and "sissitakki" which is a thick coat which Finnish troops always carry with them for the purpose of having something warm when waiting. On some of our drills some idiot had the 5 layers of clothing when we were on a 10km walk. Should be easy for anybody, but because of too much clothing he passed out! And it was way below zero. In hot conditions it is essential to watch that your men drink enough, in cold conditions it is essential to make sure they have the right clothing for the situation.
But still I like much more weathers of -10 C to even -20 C than around zero. When you get your clothing and equipment wet in the field you won't get them dry. And this makes you feel cold plus adds almoust 10kg to your total weight. The "battle belt" is unbelievably heavy when it is thoroughly wet as is the sharpnel west. Ofcourse the nicest weather is around 15 C, but the trainers seem to think the ideal is somewhere around "when hell freezes"
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Either I didn't understand something, or you have your numbers mixed up. If the acceleration of the bullet is 1000 m*s^-2 (the unit is meters per seconds^2) then it would take a second for the bullet to reach 1000 m/s speed. I don't think the bullet stays in the barrel that long...Originally posted by Peter Cairns:Bruce70,
I use 1,000m/s for a, as the muzzle velocity of a basic M-16 is 1090m/s and the barrel less than a meter, so although the energy level obviously drops with distance, 1000m/s is a good ball park figure.
You don't need precision to establish principle.
Some calculations to get the force, I suppose that the acceleration is a constant over the length of the barrel, which is 1m and the end velocity is 1000 m/s. And we have
a = v/t
x = 1/2 a t^2
f = m a.
f/m = v/t (using a=f/m).
1/t=f/(mv) and thus t = mv/f.
x = 1/2 * (f/m)*(mv/f)^2
= 1/2 * m v^2/f
f = 1/2 * m v^2/x
= 1/2 * 0.02 * 1000*1000 / 1 = 10000 N.
This is quite a large force, but one should remember that it is applied only a short time (0.002s) If we apply this force to the shooter, he will get an acceleration of 100 m/s (assuming 100kg shooter) but it will be applied only for 0.002s, which means total speed of 0.2 m/s. In reality some of the force is translated to the gun going upwards. And a 20g bullet is really quite heavy. The acceleration of the bullet is 500000 m*s^-2.
BTW I can only hope my calculations are correct, it has been some time I last did this kind of calculations...
Quick addition: You can have the same end result for the speed of the shooter by applying the conservation of momentum to the shooting.
0.02 kg * 1000 m/s = 100 * 0.2 m/s, thus I think my calculations are actually correct.
What happens to the energy? Most of it goes into deformation of the bullet and most of all in the deformation of the target. If the happening would be totally elastic, (a perfect bounce with no deformation whatsoever) then one should apply the conservation of energy together with conservation of momentum to get the resulting speed. In this situation the energy is also conserved (it always is) but it is transferred to non-kinetic energy.
[ January 30, 2006, 05:07 AM: Message edited by: Drusus ]
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From the page:
Minicat:
2.65*1.62*1.64.
Weight 750kg
Mileage 200-300 km
Top speed 110 km/h
I say this is BS. Interestingly enough all of their models have same mileage, top speed and weight. Some hold 6 persons, some 3. There is one problem with the quoted 100 miles range. You can't know if it is true. It might be or it might not be true, it is impossible to verify. But that site seems to have so much information which seems to be based on nothing that I don't think it is credible source. Mileage varies from 100 miles to 300 km, it should have been in mass manufacturing two years ago and in year 2000 first factories were installed in France and Mexico city should have been using them from 2002. BBC news. To me it seems that they are continuously coming to the market next year.
I think this is really offtopic. So I think I will leave this alone unless I have some good reason to believe that the cars are infact working as advertised. I might be wrong, but atleast I have a good reason to believe that they won't be as good as Guy Negre says.
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It was stated somewhere on the page that they get 44MJ out of 300 litres of 300 bar air. That is equivalant to one litre of gasoline. I don't know what is the efficiency of the motor, but cars run at around 40% or so. So equivalant to ~2.5 litres of gasoline at max. A 300 litre container able to withstand 300 bars is going to be quite big. So they don't have the issues with batteries or fuel cells, but they do have an issue with a big container holding compressed air. The car is going to have exactly the same problem battery powered cars have. Not enough miles before a need for refill and the air container is going to take a lot of space.
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That article is dated January 11, 2004 and they say they are starting manufacturing that year. If not hoax, vaporware at best. That article has more reasonable numbers for the car BTW...
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That site seems to have the same information as the link I provided. They claim that they have a system that can be used to have just one wire for all the electrical devices in the car. And that system will turn out to be a security system when the key is removed. And that the engine can be used with fossile fuels and work backwards as a genereator with eletricity. Or turn braking power to compressed air. Oh, did I mention that they are not releasing any technical information due to trade secrets. And ofcourse the car has a working range similar to fossile fuel cars. I still think it is a hoax. But this is OT.
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I found the site about that car. The MDI Air Car That link is actually to a question in the FAQ where it is said that the reload cost is around 1.5 euros. I think that electricity costs about 0.075e/KWh so that means that the car's airtank can have a maximum of 20KWh of energy. That equals about 2 liters of gasoline. And I don't believe that the transformation from eletricity to air to motion is too effective. So you don't get too far with that.
It is not on market. I could only find out that they have an office in Barcelona that you can visit. Their factory is supposed to be in france. I think it is a hoax.
[ January 28, 2006, 12:14 PM: Message edited by: Drusus ]
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Batteries powered by alcohol. That is a recipe for disaster, at least in the Finnish army. We are afterall überdrinkers.
Yes, I know that the alcohol doesn't necessarily have to be that kind of alcohol that makes you feel funny... But then there is the risk that our soldiers will be blind after trying if it is the good kind of alcohol. No need for flashlights in that case, so problem solved anyways.
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I have to say I love this idea.
I don't have any real friends so I want to pretend the AI is a "real" person. Yes, I know, it is sad...
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Who is the player in the chain of command? I know, a bit weird question... What I mean is that in CMx1 it seems like the player is actually every squad leader, giving commands straight to them (ok, maybe plaroon leader...). Even if the squad is out of platoon leaders command, it can do a lot of stuff, and react relatively quickly. In CMx2 will the commands the player gives have to go through the whole chain of command. That is, is the commands given by some (real or virtual) HQ and then they have to go through the chain to the squad, or is the commands given by the "voice of God" system?
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How much information of the upcoming battle you have before you make the task force decision? I think it would be vital to see the map, maybe only from the furthest away top-down viewpoint, but so that you get a general feeling of what is the situation. Or better, let the Campaign designer decide the amount of information...
How is artillery assigned in US Army? I mean, is it possible (or the standard way) to have the same mortar platoon under many FOs simultaneously? It would give all of them equal access to the fire support. When multi-multiplayer is introduced this could bring up some interesting situations... At least in the Finnish army the way is to give some amount of ammo to each observer and they can fire whenever they want. Then they can ask for more allowance from the higher levels, if they run out of ammo.
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On the other hand these attacks didn't raise a lot of will to fight against the terrorists on their soil. This is what your storyline needs to happen. As said before I think it can happen. I think the terrorist attacks need to be accompanied by a declaration of war. And they need to target also countries which didn't do anything to deserve it. In short, I think it should be clear to the governments of the countries that their only way to stop the attacks is to attack Syria. After all, europeans do have a very strong tendency to go for diplomatical solutions. Seal of Syria and wait forOriginally posted by Battlefront.com:Incorrect. 75% of the Spanish people were opposed to the war and their country's involvement. The opposition specifically platformed on withdrawing from Iraq. The attacks in Madrid did nothing to change anybody's opinion about that. If no bombings had happened and the opposition won (and they very well might have), Spanish troops would have been pulled out. The bombings simply reinforced what was already there.
Also look at what happened in London. Bombings there for the same reason as bombings in Madrid. UK forces are still very much in Iraq. The population is inreasingly unhappy with any of this, but this is true in America and there have been no attacks at all.
revolution. Or miracle...
The history of the world is filled with idiots in command
Just for examples, the Taliban thinking they had "plausible deniability" and regional safety, the coup plotters who tried to overthrow Gorbachev, Saddam for pissing off his former backers, Egypt when it closed the Suez, Noriega when he played both sides of the fence, the leadership of South Africa's Apartheid for thinking they could get away with the status quo forever, Ceausescu for not realizing it was over, so on and so forth. Oh yeah, the Bush and Blair Administrations for completely and utterly underestimating the costs and problems of occupying Iraq despite what history and common sense indicated was more or less likely.Many times even smart people do stupid things. Usually they calculate things wrong. Attacking Russia has been many times that stupid thing. One has to take into account that sometimes the things that seems to be absolutely stupid might only be so when looking from a distance. With the knowledge the leaders had in the situation they were it might have seem to be a smart thing, but whoops... Also in the situation the leaders are it might be that they have no other choice that continue to hope things will continue to be well, even if it is clear that it is all over.
Now the problem that I see with the storyline is that the Syrian commanders seems to be suicidical, not only stupid or calculating wrong. What I mean that if you stand in front of a train moving 100km/h and hope it will stop, it is suicidical. If you think that you can drive over that crossing fast enough to not be hitten by the train that is stupid. And this kind of calculating wrong is suprisingly common, actually I think it is the way most train accidents happen in Finland.
I think that if the leaders of Syria are supporting Jihadists who are attacking European countries and declaring a terror war against Europe then that is suicidical. Like standing in front of a train. They must know that at least the US has no other option than attacking a country that is openly supporting terrorists who have done attacks against masses of civilians, maybe with WMDs. The Bush administration has been so strongly against terrorism that if they would leave Syria alone in this kind of situation, well, I can't even imagine what would happen.
So there are two different paths I can see. The first one is that the leaders already know that they are going to be attacked. So they want the support of the Jihadists in the war. They just hope that they can exist still another day... They know that the end is coming but all their choices are bad. So fight till the last soldier so that the generals can live one day more... And why not support the Jihadists too, so that even they are fighting for the generals.
The other way is that they calculate wrong. Maybe they support the Jihadists hoping that they won't do anything else than speak and support the war in Iraq. The generals support the Jihadists because they need every bit of support to stop the "Assadists" to do a counter revolution. Being with Jihadists that support the AIF in Iraq could still be something that they could hope to get away with. Then the Jihadists decide to take one step further and with the help of one of the generals (there must be a crazy general in the storyline, after all...), they get WMDs and use them in Europe. Suddenly a war against Syria seems likely. Backing out of this situation might be impossible to do. If you try to, you will lose the only supporters you have left in Syria. If you don't you will be attacked by NATO. Well, we all know what they are going to do.
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Is skipping battles really in scope of CMSF? I would imagine that the one making this decision is one level upper from the player...
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I don't know what you mean by Jihadists, but I find it unlikely that the miliraty leaders would ally with them to make the coup. After all, they don't propably need them. What the leaders of the coup need is that some of the other military leaders are with them and almoust nobody is with Assad. I think it is more likely that the coup leareds would ally with the Jihadists _after_ the coup to stabilize the country. Ofcourse my opinion might be a bit more credible if I actually knew anything about Syria...4. Nationalism, pride, and pure stupidity drive this group to ally (I use the term losely) with the Jihadists, which are obviously also displeased with the turn of events. They launch a coup (note, an INTERNAL coup, not foreign) and succeed in toppling Assad. Assad and his cronies go into exile in Jordan.
Interestingly enough in Spain the opposite happened. When they were attacked, they withdrew from Iraq. I think if the threat is continuous, not just one attack, and it is clear that Syria is actively supporting the terrorists and you can't get out of the "danger zone" by not supporting the war in Iraq, then why not. Attacks against France (as they are evil opressors of muslims...) would be something that most of the Europeans would see as being too much to tolerate. Attacks against UK might be seen (at least in parts of the population) as something they could have avoided if they weren't in Iraq.5. The new government states that it is not going to give into Western demands and dares the West to attack. Saddam tried this tactic many, many times and it worked MOST of the time. Unfortunately for him, it didn't work very well in 2003 They think the US and UK (in particular) are too preoccupied with Iraq to do anything serious, and they feel the rest of Europe are a bunch of weenies and they won't do anything. But the "weenies" have been pushed a little bit too far and at least some, if not most, are willing to actively support the war in some way shape or form.
I am not trying to say that Saddam didn't overplay his hand in 2003, but I am interested to find out what exactly he did to start the war? I think he was actually more cooperative in 2003 than before, unfortunately for him the world situation had changed so that his time was over.7. Unfortunately for them, the new government overplays its hand, just as the Taliban did in 2001 and just like Saddam in 1990 and 2003. After much fruitless diplomacy, a war starts.If I had been Saddam I would have destroyed the rest of the WMDs to avoid the war...
Overall I think the plot seems to be credible, the biggest problem I see with it is that the coup leaders seems to be really stupid people with no idea about international politics... If the plot is really so that they are openly supporting terrorists, it means that they actually want to start a war against USA. Then the other problem I see with this is that I don't know how likely an alliance between Jihadists and military generals is. But it might be because I don't know enough about Syria.
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I have a feeling that the storyline is going to have a terrorist attack within Europe and Syria will be found responsible. NATO will act based on this...
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Well, I think there is one country which did fight for a long time for it's indepence. And I am sure that people in the mother country were saying that they are dumb as rock when they can't see that they would be much better of if they would just accept things for what they were. I don't want to compare different wars, but to stop fighting just for the reason that your standard of living would be better in the sort term* if you didn't fight isn't enough IMHO. Fighting for your countrys indepence, for freedom, for your religion and so on might be more important than prosperity and wellbeing. Maybe the Arabs want to live in the traditional way?
It is ofcourse a bit of a philosophical question to ask if the Russians, Germans, French or any of the countries in WWI would have been better of if they would just have surrendered. Wellbeing and all that. But that is not what the war was about. Should the Vietnamese just have accepted things as they were. Or should the Communists have accepted things as they were in 1918? Everybody would have been better of, but again, that is not what the fighting was about. So now in Iraq it shouldn't be amazing that Sunnis are fighting even if it means a lower standard of living. They are not fighting for to achieve prosperity.
* You can't really say how things will turn out in the long term.
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Will illumination be modeled? I know it is not the easiest to calculate realistically what kind of light conditions there will be on the field when illmuination is used, but this will be really important for the Syrian player. 81mm mortar illumination grenades are enough to make the battlefield bright enough for fighting. This one will have a huge impact for night combat when CMx2 gets back to modeling WWII battles.
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URC,
First, I don't agree that the Syrians should try to use highly mobile defence. At least in the way you are suggesting. Lets go through this...
1) Eliminating the use of enemy air force because they are slow to react and can't use weapons near friendly units.
The response of Air Forces in the area of operation could be suprisingly quick. And using weapons like the 30mm gun in A-10 can be used near friendly units and will destroy any Syrian armor in the open easily and effectively given a clear shot. Getting a clear shot isn't necessarily easy in urban enviroment, but still doable.
2) Negates their combined arms force and any technological advantage.
Would you specify _why_ that would happen? An M1 is still a lot better than T72 even if suprised. Combined forces remain to have the advantage of being a combined force even if suprised.
3) The only advatage the attacker is going to have is communications and it is not a big advantage.
First, even if I would assume that air forces, technology and combined forces would not be useful because of something, the US will still has many advantages. They are better trained. They have a lot better intelligence. That means they propably can see the large Syrian force moving in to attack. And good communications is a major advantage in a situation like this. You can call in reserves. You can understand what is happening around you. Actually without communications it is very well possible that you don't have command&control at all.
The problem the Syrians are going to have is that they should be able to make a coordinated counter attack in urban enviroment, do it quickly, without exposing themselves before the attack, and then be able to withdraw in coordination. All this should be done in reaction to what the enemy is doing. If you don't have good communications I don't believe this is possible to do at all. They should withdraw before 30min has gone from the start of the battle else they are going to be annihilated by enemy air forces. This kind of attack is also extremely hard to make in the level of command&control which isn't the strongest part of the Syrian forces.
I think you misunderstood the way I tought the Syrians should fight. Maybe I wasn't too clear about it either. But in short it is ambush, move close to the enemy and eliminate the enemy. This is done on a level of company, maybe a batallion but no more. This can also be done in part of a bigger battle, but then the risk of enemy reinforcements is high. This all should happen _inside_ urban area, not so that you fight from the village against an enemy who is 500m or more outside the village. That way US forces can use most of their advantages. But it is very, very important that the enemy doesn't know where you are defending and with how big of a force. If that happens you are doomed to lose without even causing that much of casualties. This concealement can be achieved in urban areas, most of US technological surveilance only sees that there are people in that village. But that doesn't help much, there usually are people in villages...
I must admit that these ways of defending are actually quite similar. But there are some differences. The most notable is propably that what I suggest is done on the company level. I think your counter attack would be on higher level. Don't know about that, though. Also I don't think that the Syrians should rely on high mobility. I think they should rely on infantry close by and which is prepared to fight in this way. Wire communication + some preplanned counter attack routes is enough. They might be supported by some concealed T-55s or something, but I don't know if they should move at all. High mobility means that you are easily spotted once you start moving. Not necessarily so for infantry moving short distances.
Ofcourse the thruth is that whatever the Syrians pull out of their bag of tricks, they will lose the war if the USA and NATO forces are commited to win the conventional war. The question is how quickly and how badly they will lose. The only way to victory is many years of high support from the populace and guerilla tactics. But that is not what CMSF is about.
I must admit that I don't know that much about Syrian forces or their doctrine and most of all I am not familiar with the higher levels of commanding a battle. So it might be that I am badly wrong...
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If the Syrian special forces are well trained and trained to fight against forces like USA and Israel and if the morale of Syrians fighting is better than Iraqi forces morale then there is going to be really interesting fights. They are likely going to be urban battles where it is entirely possible that whole platoons of US troops might get eliminated. This will never happen if USA knows what they are fighting against. I mean that if the US forces attack against a village and they know there is going to be a well trained unit of size X defending it, they are going to win, and propably quite easily. But if they are fooled or their intelligence fails, then things will look different. And if the Syrians know what they are doing the only way to find out of this kind of suprise is human intelligence or recon by troops, and the latter is players responsibility.
Example scenario: US Stryker company is given a mission to clear a village where there is believed to be only a mob of AK-47 carrying 'soldiers' (or some snipers or no forces at all). But in fact there is a company+ of special forces which are equipped reasonably well and also trained for this kind of mission. Then the battle will be atleast balanced if not in favor for the Syrians. A well planned ambush on tactical level and the fight might be really interesting. The Syrians could try to move their troops as close to the US troops as possible to prevent the use of US air and artillery superiority. And because the Stryker companys mission could very well be a sideshow part of the brigades operation, it might be that reserves are far away and might be tied in already.
On the operational or war level this victory (or atleast a draw) for the Syrian forces would not have any effect. The village would quickly be cleaned with superior forces. But for CMSF this would be an interesting battle. The Syrian forces can win battles given that 1) the US side doesn't know before the battle what they are fighting against and 2) in the battle Syrians manage to ambush or atleast suprise the enemy somehow. The player must take care of number 2 and BFC should take care of number 1.
Maybe I should replace special forces with some forces from elite division, as using SF for this kind of mission doesn't seem likely. But a company from elite forces division can do this type of mission (as part of the divisions defence), if the Syrians are trained for this. To me it seems that the Republician Guard of Iraq was trained to fight in stupid ways against an enemy like USA. That is, they fought like they had the superiority in combat power when the exact opposite was true. I actually know quite little about OIF so this is just the impression I have gotten based on nothing...
Battle for Taiwan.
in Combat Mission Shock Force 1
Posted
Which is just totally wrong. I think that the current president of USA is the one who is responsible for the _not necessary_ sacrifises. Even if you think that the war is a good thing, it is a fact that there have been _huge_ mistakes made in the planning of the war or, as some might say, in the fact that there wasn't any plan at all except to destroy Saddams army. And that has caused the most of the sacrifices in the war, and more importantly those sacrifices could have been avoided. I think Bush is responsible for those casualties.
On topic, if there would be a battle over Taiwan, I think it wouldn't start in a day, but gradually escalate to a full out war. This would give time for the economies to get used to the situation. US economy could solve the problem of losing the supply from China much easier than China could solve the problem of lost demand. And if there would be a suprise attack by China, then some wars do cause economies to take a hard hit. If the war is seen severe enough you will start gearing your economy to produce war supplies fast. So it doesn't matter if your local shop runs out of trinkets to sell. It is not important when a nation fights over its existence.