Lethaface

That's colored confidential.

Thanks for that detailed background, you obviously know much more than me about that history All sounds rather fair and accurate as far as I'm able to judge that. I too don't think that colonialism was all in bad faith or extractive. Obviously the reason was originally purely self interest and looking to create trade monopolies (which was the go to at that time in history), but where people go good and bad things happen. Plenty of things that were happening from late 1800s were for the good of many people. Although one could also argue that the Dutch made good use of the Javanese elite and their ways, while the Javanese learned a thing or two from the Dutch. The privilidged status they had before surely didn't help with regards to their behavior afterwards. On again another note how we / Dutch dealt with the Moluccan KNIL soldiers doesn't really deserve an award either. Not that I think think everything is the blame of the Dutch and personally I feel 0 guilt; I wasn't even born yet. Anyway my point was more from the perspective of Dutch politics and sentiment inside the Netherlands towards the whole thing at the time. And how the wars are framed (as a police action), especially from people who didn't contribute a thing to the pre-Indonesian development. The soldiers mostly just did their job, of course every tree has rotten apples. I also understand the tragedy for people who were actually living in the East. In the end how it went is rather unfortunate and the US foreign policy surely didn't help a dime. Malaysia has it's own share of issues but has gotten, at least imo, much better out of that period.

Not trying to be semantical but imo that's basically the receipt for a counter attack, in other words an offensive form of defense. And from what I've read the doctrine behind operations of German Panzer Divisions. At least according to some of the Generals. Anyway I'm not trying to say that various parts of the leadership of Germany weren't dreaming of victorious offensives, which weren't always grounded in reality so to speak. The whole of the Bulge operation is probably an example. Perhaps I read his words differently. One example of successful employment of Panzer Divisions counterattacks while on the operational / strategic defense are the Chir river battles of 1942 (found this: https://www.historynet.com/study-command-general-balcks-chir-river-battles-1942.htm). I'm sure there are more but I'm also not a real grog when it comes to knowing these things from memory, but that was a battle which featured in that Balck book I read a couple of months ago so fresh enough to remember for me. Imo you could conceptually call operational / strategic armored reserves linebacker formations. Perhaps not organic to the brigade / division, but if you have Tank Armies to play with I guess the need for reserves being organic inside a formation is less of a concern. The concept imo being keeping strong mobile and armored formations behind the line / in reserve, to counter attack the enemy at 'the right' moment in the 'optimal' fashion. In my mind the differences between JasonC's example, the Chir battles and Russians sliding in new divisions into gaps where previous divisions used to be, are more like different examples of types of counter attack (the one which fits the army in question) and perhaps on a different level (tactical/operational/theater/strategic). How competent the counter attacks were performed and whether higher command had the habit of stealing reserves before they were required is another question imo. And perhaps part of the reason for 2 up 1 back brigade formations?

Interesting, thanks for that. The point of throwing away ones best forces in needless / futile (counter) attacks is well made. However, he doesn't really address how the defensively employed tanks would do much better in combined arms against all that superior firepower. Are they to be operated as semi static bunkers? Recently I've read Order in Chaos by Hermann Balck. I think it was a good read. Mainly because it allows a view from the perspective of Balck, a career officer in both WWI & WWII. But he also goes into exactly these subjects. On a number of points like the forming of green PD divisions, he has a similar view on things compared to what JasonC posted. But at the same time he explains quite clearly why he thinks that offense is superior to defense in modern warfare with heavy artillery and airsupport. In the end his view is that offense is better mainly because he feels that a successful offense is less costly than a failed defense. While that's not really a fair comparison imo, in the context I understood it like that he believed that Germany didn't have the manpower, equipment or industry to fight a war of attrition and so in the end a defense would be a prolonged affair, very costly in lives and ultimately depend on the enemy losing stomach for attacks to get to the negotiation table (before your own troops lose the stomach holding out the onslaught). While a proper offense can destroy enemy formations and force an enemy to the same negotiation table with less casualties, sooner and with a better position to negotiate from. A proper offense in his view would be something along the lines of what @ASL Veteran stated above. An infantry formation with artillery etc holds a natural defensive barrier like a river as a anvil. With the enemy attacking the anvil, mobile Panzer formation would mover around the flank to the rear of the attack enemy formations and smash them (Just a short summary and perhaps not worded perfectly, but well enough imo). And from what I learned he did put this in practice quite a number of times and in a rather successful manner.

Great AAR!

Not disagreeing on what would have ultimately worked better macro economically / geopolitically. However, I do think the sentiment in much of political NL at the time was at least a bit hypocrite; having just been freed from occupation by the Germans we felt the need to wage war to continue our occupation of the Indonesian archipelago. Also I'm not that impressed by US foreign policy at the time (or UN), but I'd say probably the Dutch could have done better and work out something allowing all groups to keep their dignity while moving forward. I think originally the sentiment was to just get 'de Oost' back and send the army at it to get it done. Did some reading about it quite a while ago, as my granddad fought the whole war (46-49) and have some interesting pictures from the time. Among the pictures are plenty which show that they (the soldiers) had a good relation with (part of the) local people. Unfortunately my grandmother turned in a trophy revolver he captured there. Also unfortunately I didn't get to know him as he passed away shortly before I was born, but my father told me he never really wanted to talk much about it (apart from telling my father how they were once strafed by an airplane and giving him some supposed cannon projectile from that encounter). Another interesting anecdote he gave my father was that his fellow soldiers from the province Drenthe always died first (without explaining why). Having lived in Malaysia for a while (ex-wife Malay) I have some understanding of the culture and sure is a great part of the world to live!

In a test a while back T-64s and T-80s did plenty of dying against hull down M60A3 TTS, lucky (lower hull/side) dragon hits and various TOWs. Especially those ITOWs did great (from the M901), but Bradley fired tows also work great; sometimes needed two shots for the KO. So mainly the T-64/T-80 turrets are very well protected, which is imo correct.

@Sequoia interesting article and website, thanks. I think his reasoning is spot on on the macro level. The 'success' of the ban on chemical weapons has more to do with the effectiveness / efficiency of the weapon than with moral reasons. Also fully agree on his view on why cluster munitions will never be banned successfully. I always think we might as well (or even better) invest in proper micro self destruction mechanisms for bomblets made available open source, compared to trying to ban stuff that will be used until something more effective comes up.

Steam has slightly different path because everything is inside the steam install folder, while for BFC installs the userdata / mods / hotkeys etc go into \documents\battlefront\game by default.

If I need to be conquered, wouldn't mind her to be the culprit

I actually played that 2nd mission a while back and I guess you missed something. If you do terrain analysis you can see that the terrain isn't gradual but there are many 'steps' with reverse slopes, danger. You have infantry and APCs. So after securing the starting area, move some infantry forward wide to the next slope under tank cover. Recon it, perhaps use some of your support assets for fires and use the mountain for observation. Keep on it and clear the steps one by one, you'll push the enemy back. I took some losses from sneaky tanks far back, but that's all IIRC Perhaps it's difficult, but imo it's weak form to directly call 'difficult' as bad design without further argumentation, which you seem to do.

Nice!

One thing that could help is selecting your NVIDIA card under the OpenGL rendering GPU option. Or at least that makes sure it's actually using your 1070 for OpenGL. Also IIRC threaded optimization should be off for CM, while enabling triple buffering. And indeed it might be worthwile to try and disable VSYNC both ingame and in the Nvidia settings.

Recognizable. I too have learned that expecting the same qauality & quantity of others (who can't always deliver that) is bound to lead to friction and or disappointment. Although you should always slack off to be able to keep surpassing expectations when it matters ;-). On scenarios, for me it depends what I expect from the scenario / why I play it: * A casual playthrough of a scenario, or just for immersion (RealTime can be fun for this): just play it out in one go and don't mind too much about winning / losing. If I win I win, if I lose I lose and that's fine. * A determined play to beat the scenario with proper analysis, planning and tactics: Restart if necessary and or if I want to try out several approaches of a given problem, savescum. Another reason for save/load is when troops do things I didn't want them to do. I can't really remember much scenario's that required more than one restart to win, perhaps apart from some vignettes which are notoriously hard. * Campaign play: depending on the campaign (Modern vs WW2, type of army) I can become a bit obsessed minimizing casualties and or the optimal way to achieve victory. So probably like determined play but more savescum/restarts if I don't like how things played out. However, if I feel I gave good orders and the troops behaved accordingly I'l usually accept the outcome and not restart or reload; casualties are a factor and the immersion of having to use units with prior casualties in further battles can be very rewarding imo. However determined CM play requires a lot of thinking and energy (in my case), so that's not always an option after a busy workday / week.

https://isgeschiedenis.nl/nieuws/nederlandse-krijgsmacht-als-hippieleger https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=nl&tl=en&u=https://isgeschiedenis.nl/nieuws/nederlandse-krijgsmacht-als-hippieleger By the way there are still 'unions' for army, police, etc. Edit: it was all before I was born anyway (1982), so not an expert. However I think that perhaps there is a different appreciation for unions in different places. Most professional sectors have 'unions' in the Netherlands. These negotiate, among other things, salary 'thresholds', benefits and other stuff on behalf of the whole sector. They don't have anything to say on the workfloor, but can call up their members (voluntary) for a strike as part of negotiations. Not that strikes are common here the last decades. Also newer sectors like IT don't really have unions or sectoral salary houses etc. The long hair is just the result of a legal action filed by the union for drafted military personnel. This legal bit is still in affect although in the professional army nowadays long hairs aren't a thing really.

I don't know, however I don't think any union had much to say when it came to showing up for appèl or deploying to the field. Although long hair troops would be fun

Just insert the sound in their earpiece PS Nice car! PS2 the Carrera GT comes with a race-spec factory howling v10. That's, imo, a different beast. I don't own one unfortunately. Some sound of the original without straight pipes, which ruin the sound Edit: better vid

Just put a couple of very big loudspeakers (lower range only) in the Co HQ vehicle, which can 'emulate' the sound of a A-10 gun run when a JDAM from a F-35 is gliding on it's way to the target. Problem solved Recently I heard parts of an interview with a departing Dutch general on the radio. He also stated that the troops don't want an F-35, but something loud and close to them which they and enemy can hear (although they could in theory also do a flyover with an F-35 on afterburner I guess). I guess the issue is more similar to electric cars and my perception of them; however fast an electric vehicle is, it's still not a Porsche Carrera GT with a howling atmospheric V10. That's a car.

Firing a offmap US 107mm mortar maximum smoke mission not only uses up smoke but also HE. It also causes craters, so it seems that it is firing a 'dual smoke / HE' round. That seems to be a bug?

FWIW I enjoy these variations. It's good to add these I think, gives some nice quick to play battles available in which the player can try out the various formations/hardware, without having to dive in the editor.

Where you thinking of joining the separatists?

Some idyllic campfire scenery These held their own quite well. Enjoying the view

The draw distance in CMCW seems very short indeed, I did notice with regard to ground textures mainly. But could just be the size of maps and forces.

A-10s did a great job when on target as well! Cluster bombs, Mavericks and the 30mm.

Didn't knew about the modelled abstraction regarding the FAC, so thanks for that. Anyway I'm not advocating for 'low risk to friendlies' especially. AFAIK the current areat targets aren't low risk to friendlies at all! In CMSF2 nor CMBS I never had any issue that I can remember regarding the size of the area I wanted targeted. Although I don't remember if the box sizes are the same. I guess that mainly due to the expanded combat areas in CMCW some larger size is warranted. I had info on a MRB moving along a road, but it turned out the bastiges moved slightly beyond my assigned 'kill zone' and the A-10 flying over looked at the procedures and told me 'computer says no' and the MRB happily proceeded along it's route while the A-10 either milled around or declared winchester. Maybe the type of strike could be differentiated for different loadouts or types of planes? Like a F-4D carrying (cluster)bombs or rockets can only be assigned a point target where it will drop ordnance (ideally using a vector/line), but not have the ability to scan for targets inside an area. While planes with ATGM / cannon loadout and ground attack capability (otherwise they wouldn't be in CM) can also can for targets in a limited zone but with high risk to friendlies , with helicopters being more free and but also more vulnerable to AA.