Moronic Max

You're not thinking nasty enough; put the emitters in civvie areas. You want to fire a HARM at the emitter, fine; hope you don't mind hitting a mosque when you do so.

In campaign, just zee US. In quick or custom battles, whomever you wish.

And here I was hoping for a pic of Captain America...

From my time at a community college a few years back, I can say you're absolutely correct there. Somewhat frightening, really. An exchange in one of Dan Simmons' recent scifi novels (Olympos, I think it was) summed it up rather nicely. A history prof told Odysseus (yes, that Odysseus) the story of the battle for Okinawa, and his father's role in it. Odysseus, after asking about the scale of the thing, made a statement to the effect that the battle must be incredibly famous, remembered in song, and so on. The history prof said "no, actually, among my people it is almost entirely forgotten"

Ah, yes, The Bear and the Dragon, in which a dozen or so F-16s destroy an entire armored division and an aegis cruiser shoots down an ICBM. Man, what happened to the author I remember from Red Storm Rising, eh?

Did they actually do that in 24? I gave up on it 1/3 of the way through the first season. It strained my suspension of disbelief past the breaking point. I dunno. I want to believe that, but for that reason I'm reluctant to believe it. If that makes sense. In other words, since I know that's the conclusion I'd like to come to, I'm not sure I can trust myself to come to it "objectively". That, and I don't assume rationality. I don't assume irrationality either, but, as far as I can tell (going on my own experiences and my limited historical reading), people are not (solely) creatures of logic and rationality. Even--or perhaps especially--people who have great power. Oren, what Peter said. Don't feed the troll. Unless you find out where the guy is in the real world, of course. If you manage that, have fun. And post pics. Otherwise, ignore, ignore, ignore.

So, which current (or former) forum member is TanksMucho? On topic, I'm not worried about Iran using nukes on its own; I'm worried about Iran supplying nukes to people who will use them. I'm not sure if that's a realistic fear, though.

Meh. I wanna see some kinetic harpoons deployed in orbit if we're gonna talk about future weapons.

Because he's lazy. Duh.

At least the pilot managed to get out.

Alternatively, they could simply have a trigger in place that does something to the effect of "if destroyed, update LoS map", which shouldn't be very processor intensive at all--depending on how detailed building damage modeling is.

A human life cannot be given a price tag. Not without gross injustice, at any rate. How much does it cost to insure that there's an M1A2 everywhere one could be needed to burst a bunker, as opposed to making sure there's a TOW launcher everywhere one could be needed to burst a bunker?

Ah, you're right. I missed the last part of that sentence. Oops.

My math may be off here, but wouldn't that mean that the effectiveness of the armor would be 75%? (.5 * .5 = .25 = RPG effectiveness after armor + 50% dud rate)

If you can hit an enemy vehicle, why use a sticky round? Maybe if they implement some sort of Ogre/Bolo-esque uber unit of doom, then I could see that.

Eh? I mean, yeah, there was something like that the first time I installed HL2, but after the initial installation, logging in to play took maybe 10 seconds a pop. And for that matter, after the initial installation you don't even need to log in.

On the one hand, that'd be nice. On the other hand, I shudder to think how irritating doing that in real time online play would be. Then again, since we'll be able to pause in singleplay and will (eventually) be able to distribute the workload in coplay, that shouldn't be too bad.

And how many instances did you find of a newer soviet anti-armor round actually being used on the hull of an M1A1?

Really? It seems to me that'd involve fewer people, at least on the US side, than would make for compelling gameplay. I may be underestimating the small-scale fidelity of CMx2, however.

I'd be a lot more fond of it if it weren't the first major step down the "trusted computing" road. Fond of that path, I am not.

Oh, well, if we're getting a sci-fi game, how about something based on Hammer's Slammers? The equipment and tactics would certainly seem compatible with the CMx2 engine, with the possible exception of the "shooting down artillery shells and incoming ATGMs" stuff.

ISTR that the next one will be a western european WWII game. Aside from that, no idea. I do hope we eventually see a CMx2 title set in the Pacific.

They're not in the business of long-term thinking. Taking positions that will be of great benefit a decade or two down the road doesn't help them win the current election--or so the theory goes. Short-term fixes are the name of the game.

If they were rational and shared your (well, and mine, I suppose, as I agree with most of the points you made) perspective, that'd be one thing. But, ah...how often is the decision to go to war a rational one? I'd argue that it's typically irrational. China's leadership is human. Humans can and do behave irrationally. Therefore, expecting them not to do something counter-productive because it's irrational is, perhaps, expecting too much of them. I've done things that were irrational and counter-productive, and I imagine the same is true of most people looking over this thread.

What, like in Total Annihilation, where you could win a battle by sending a fleet of transport aircraft to pick up the (irreplacable) Commander and then self destruct, resulting in either a crippled enemy or an instant win, depending on the victory conditions? Cool. Let's put that in CMSF