costard
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Posts posted by costard
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Cheers for the great read guys.
Were there any differences in the overall reliability of the tank designs contributing to their effectiveness, or were they all roughly the same?
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Arguably it was the use of directional drilling that led to the first Gulf War - the Kuwaitis drilling over into Iraqi fields and pinching their oil.
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The customer is often wrong.
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How about a "build keyhole" option at setup? The covered arc is used to define the arc of fire for the dug in gun. Outside this arc (maybe with a penumbra effect coded in) nothing can get at the gun, except mortars where there is no roof and sufficiently large HE shells, CAS etc. The attacker doesn't know where the arc lies, beyond analysis of ineffective area targeted shells, but to counter this, the defender can't move the gun to fire outside the defined arc without giving up the cover values.
The advantages (as I understand it) for CMX2 are that the placement code doesn't need to be re-defined to a smaller scale to give the desired effect (i.e. place the gun, define the arc and not worry about micro-placement issues) and that the same option can be used to site MGs, schreks, etc.
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Sort of a "bunker - lite" approach? Sounds good.
Recon by fire can still be used if you have a less determinable accuracy from the Area Fire - i.e. it includes an area of ground 10mx10m instead of 1mx1m. Improves the survivability chances of anything being deliberately targeted by Area Fire, too. I think BFC went some way toward this with CMX2.
I think you run into problems where the gun isn't able to be positioned well enough to take advantage of the terrain as in real life. I modified the Hornet's Nest scenario to include a Pak43 - placed well back on the crest it took well over one hundred shells from the attackers to knock it out because the angle of the incoming shells was too fine - the mix of ballistics and range (and a lack of attacking mortars) ensured good survival for the gun. The range and the height differentials were such that the game engine was giving a nearly realistic result - the exaggeration of both let the calculations come out 'better'. In the course of a normal map setup, I don't think you can get these results because the ability to adjust the original placement of the gun doesn't go down to that fine a level (certainly not with CM:SF). [As an aside, placing the gun back on the crest meant that once the attacking tanks were close enough (about five hundred meters) they could not be zapped due to lack of LOS.]
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Well, I might point out that even in the case of Hitler's Germany, there were no 'easy' solutions, no consensus, and no coalition troops massing on the German border. The coalition only formed after the fact once the military situation had become a crisis. Perhaps that wasn't wise. Arguably preemption wasn't realistic. It is debatable.
Preemption, like poker, is always going to be a game of partial information. It is never going to be obvious what the right choice is beforehand. Sometimes however it can be pretty clear after the fact that finger crossing and hoping for the best wasn't an effective strategy.
In any case, the words 'war' and 'invasion' are getting thrown around. I'm not advocating either. If limited means like air strikes or assassinations are effective as delaying tactics, then I think they should be employed, given that Iran's strategic interests seem to be opposite those of the USA/Israel alliance. If these limited means would not be effective, then I wouldn't use them either, and preemption is off the table.
The "mistake" of letting Hitler start WW2 is often used as an argument to promote the advisability of starting a war on our own terms. It is a false argument in many ways, but at its fundament, if the idea is not to have a war, that idea cannot be served by starting a war.
The next part of the argument is to state that war is an inevitability. This too is false: history has shown that periods of peace exist between wars. I can find no argument for the non-existence of a continual, or even perpetual peace. It might be argued that man is irrational and seeks his own destruction; I'd argue that I'd be better served if the proponent of that argument went and destroyed himself and left me in peace. In fact, that way we both win.
Runyan99 - you don't advocate "war" or "invasion", but you do advocate "air strikes" and "assassination". If you cannot see the disconnect here you need to go back and study the meaning of the words until you can see what everyone else here sees.
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Sounds like one of those ideas that gets funding because the person allocating the funds either 1) is in bed with the recipient of the funds, or 2) isn't bright enough to sort the sh!t from the shinola. That said, where would Barnes Wallace be without funding for his bouncing bombs? Or Oppenheimer, for that matter?
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Good luck Aff. Four different cultures throwing up four variants of leadership...
personal relationships and the individual valuing trust worth a look at?
grofaz - I'm fairly sure none of the others had a similar tag applied by their own populace during the conflict
Great thread topic.
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Brown trousers all round, I'll bet. An unexpected collision of that magnitude has to be something of a shock to experience - particularly if everyone was on the job, doing their best to detect another craft out there.
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You know, it could be that Iran acquiring a nuke or two would actually help the situation. Call me crazy, but I think the resultant behaviour on both sides would most likely contain a little more mutual respect, something the Iranians are probably aware of.
At the moment, Iran behaves like the little smartarse, daring the school enforcer to hit him and thereby win the sympathy of the non-aggressor types. {of course, this is from a western perspective - I understand that the media portrayal of Iranian behaviour is unlikely to be balanced} The moment Iran joins "the club", it is required to behave with the dignity commensurate with such an exalted position on the world stage. And Israel has to adjust it's risk analysis in terms of the likely outcomes of continuing assassination of another sovereign country's citizens.
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bomb the sh!t out of them <--> watch the mushrooms grow.
That, my simple-minded friend, is a strawman since no one has suggested just sitting back and waiting for the bottles of instant sunshine to be uncorked. It's also a false dilemma since there are plenty of other options between the only two that you could come up with.
Thanks for the links, JonS. A valuable resource there.
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As Moon said, of course we knew what was going to happen when we posted the screenshot. It *always* happens when we post pre-release screenshots. It doesn't matter what the pic is of, there's always someone who wants to tear into it. If we had put up a screenshot of a Sherman perhaps GSX would have concluded the game is going to be everything he had ever hoped it would be and someone else would draw asinine conclusions, like that we weren't going to include German tanks.
And if we don't post any we take flak for that too
A fact life is that if you give gamers (in any genre) a chance to examine something there will be a negative backlash. The worst backlash typically comes from the hardcore gamer type. They are the ones who have shown repeated tendencies to go out of their way to try and kill off their own hobby. I say that because going out of their way to be negative, develop conspiracy theories, personally attack the people that make the games, etc. can hardly be seen as productive. Some, and I and one of them, would call it a symptom of some sort of psychosis. At the very least they appear to be hopelessly miserable Human beings and feel that it would be best if everybody else were that way too
Steve
Cobblers. It's a simple and understandable reaction to the "tease" which you deliberately employ as part of your marketing technique and I'll bet you're delighted with the reaction so far.
All power to BFC - they make great games.
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Actually, read it in an Aussie paper.
http://www.theage.com.au/national/islam-group-urges-forest-fire-jihad-20080906-4b53.html?page=-1
Does note your point that it's hit and miss. But you got to admit, a pack of matches is pretty cheap.
A threat is a threat, article says the Aussie intel agencies are on it.
Lars - ok, fair enough. Aussie papers are staffed by dills just as those around the world are. Dills in search of column inches. And its true, the devastation achieved with a 20 cent box of matches represents an awesome return on your investment. But why would you light a fire out at Kilmore when you could get a much, much better result if lit it somewhere else? And really, the act lacks, umm, balls, charisma, and um, well, HE. Not much good for your lunatic followers with a yen for loud bangs. Sort of wussy.
Other Means - it is suspected that the koalas are proto-astronauts, nature's attempt to have a life form evolve to inter-stellar travel.
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I heard that a terrorist leader told muslims to set fires in an act of terrorism. I know thats not the cause of the fire but may be the cause of many more. If they are really planning to act this plan out how do you think they will stop it?
If you heard it in Wisconsin it is undoubtedly true.
Lighting a bushfire as an act of deliberate destruction is pretty hit and miss - the circumstances whereby an effective result is likely don't come around all that often, certainly not often enough for the act to be politically useful with its timing.
The lesson to be learned here is - avoid the disaster if possible. The problem with most of the towns burnt is that they had maybe two roads into them, both going through burning forest; no chance to avoid. I guess the same could be said for attempting to inspire racist or religious hatred and war - better to avoid it if at all possible, or at least be prepared to have anyone listening doubt your motives and sanity.
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Michael Emrys - yes, Eucaluypt forests. All the Eucalypt leaves contain a highly flammable oil. When most of the moisture is stripped out by a hot northerly wind, and the fire manages to get into the crown, the fire then begins to travel at the same speed as the wind. The crown is at about thirty metres for most of these southern forests - the radiant heat at the fire front is huge, one estimate being about 12000 kW/m2 for the fires at Kinglake. The firetrucks are required to get out of an area when the radiant heat hits 4 kW/m2. So you see, you don't so much have a fast moving fire as a slow moving explosion.
FAI - arson is likely in a couple of the fires, but the number of possible causes is pretty big: a broken bottle lying on the ground would be enough to start a fire in the temperatures we've been getting. Arson is going to be hard to prove, but easy to accept as a "reason" for these events - and it'll provide some media filler material. That's my read on it, anyway.
And Affentitten has it right on the planning and building of dwellings - not that you've been allowed to cut down a tree on your block for the last 15 years or so. As an aside, there have been quite a number of houses built in gullies and on floodplains during that same period. Sure, we haven't had much rain in that time, but it will come....
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Well the Victorian government has announced a Royal Commision, which is the standard Australian reflex. The pundits are also nattering on about the policy of allowing people to stay with their homes and defend them versus total evacuation. But I feel this is really a case of trying to apportion blame because people didn't survive the unsurviveable.
The flames were being pushed along at between 60 and 80 kms an hour, fanned by winds of over 100kms an hour driving a storm of burning debris. The typical story seemed to be "I saw the smoke over the hill. It was about 2 kms away. I went and got the kids and the wife and then when we went back outside the roof was already alight. It was about 4 minutes from the time I first saw the smoke until the time the house was alight and we were fleeing for our lives."
The temperatures in that part of the world had been over 40 degrees C for about 2 weeks. This was truly an act of nature / God rather than somebody's bad management decision.
Of course, when ****wits light fires for fun there isn;t much you can do either.
I'd agree with all of this - though the decision not to have fuel reduction burns (as practised by earlier generations of forest management) is based on the ignorance of risk management and a lack of adequate apportioning of accountability in state government organisations. If no-one can make the decision to allow a fuel reduction burn go ahead because the risk of [an accident] is not zero, then they will not take place. Instead, a high temperature, uncontrolled burn will take place - possibly, maybe even probably at the worst possible time.
A fuel reduction burn is a controlled fire that gets rid of leaf litter and debris that has collected on the ground and in the understory. After twenty years of natural accumulation of this debris, you can end up with more than a metre of loosely stacked fuel sitting on the floor of the forest. After a week of 40+ temperatures, this can ignite and stay lit with a carelessly discarded cigarette butt - the problem then becomes one where, if there is enough fuel and enough wind, the fire gets into the crown of the forest.
In December 2006 / January 2007 we had some big fires in Victoria - huge acreages burnt. We were lucky, though, that an unusual weather system happened to be around at the time, giving very little wind and relatively low temperatures. This weekend we found out (again) what happens when we rely on luck for the management of our fire prone forests.
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I can heartily recommend Medicina town as worth a visit - though I'm trying to defend little more than rubble at the moment. Five or so minutes to go...
Waffen --I have designed a number of urban combat scenarios, but most of CMBB's. For CMAK scenarios is the size you are looking for, I can suggest one of mine.
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Bigger, but more "urban" is:
This one is set in the closing weeks of the war in northern Italy. Features a hurried attack by a British Armored group advancing over open farmland to attack the town of Medicina. Historical situation and map is based on actual terrain.
There is also an AI version (Brits vs. AI) at TSD.
Good luck if you decide to play one of these.
Bannon
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- even stranger that they'd use them on their own hospital.
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Sergei - you are a poet.
Lethaface - I'm reminded of a US Marine commander who took over a unit suffering from poor morale. He introduced a system of flogging one man in ten on a regular basis and told the unit that the floggings would continue until morale improved: I suspect that the latest round of "disproportionate response" in what used to be Palestine is tailored along the same psychological lines. Whether it will have any useful result remains to be seen.
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Heh - it gets better. In Australia, we're talking about defaulting on the family home loan. The only thing preventing the banks from coming in and taking over the whole shebang is a very real understanding of the consequences - where the law as practiced in the courts has a very limited application. Too, what point in becoming the ruler of the midden? Better by far to keep milking gently.
It's kinda nice - the law is written in such a way as to force the recognition of unwritten law...
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Yes, they can declare bankruptcy - but they are still held liable for the defaulted contract. Their future earnings will be garnished to pay this debt. There is no "walk away, no more to pay". I know this seems contrary to the spirit of the idea of bankruptcy, and truly seems to be idiotic legislation, but it is what stands in this country.
My brother the lawyer was certain I'd cocked this up when I tried to explain, so he went and checked (he gets cranky when laypeople try to tell him what the law is). Truly amazing stuff in Oz.
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Why's that?
I'm not suggeting that the terms of contracts be changed - just that future ones get to be a bit more rational. Or that the law is changed to allow them to be.
I agree that it makes sense - borrowers need to understand that they shouldn't just walk away from their debt obligation. I just don't see that the legislation should be different for business borrowers - that a limited liability company should be less obliged than a taxpaying citizen. After all - a citizen votes, a company doesn't.
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It's no more debt slavery than any other hire-purchase contract with the same arrrangement is - and it makes a great deal more sense.
The problem I have with it is the changeable nature of the contract - one entered into with the understanding that you are not liable for the entire value of the contract (i.e including any and all interest chargeable, that too varying) if you go bankrupt becomes one where you are.
Iraqi Police lectured
in General Discussion Forum
Posted
Hmmm, the lecturer has problems with the "social process" aspect of his delivery. That is, he's not making it easy for anyone he's lecturing to side with his point of view.
He's certainly PO'd, that message is coming through loud and clear.
Thanks for the link Bradley.