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slug88

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Posts posted by slug88

  1. Re: IR

     

    Your thermal optics (tank/bradley optics, PAS-13, etc) cannot see things like IR chemlights, strobes, or IR lasers.  The process for each of them is different, in effect NODs/IR emitters are working on the IR "light" emitted, while thermal is receiving the heat emitted by objects.  

     

    I'm not an engineer, nor will pretend to be.  But that's the easiest break down.  If you see "night vision" style optics at work, you'll notice while the world is now green colored, the brighter spots are still light emitters because they're giving off IR emissions. IR chemlights/strobes/lasers are just IR light only emitters, which is super sweet when working in the dark against non-night vision equipped enemies as you can do all sorts of stuff with those, but everyone with night vision equipment (even older models that usually require an IR spotlight) will see you easily.

     

    Thermal optics will not see any of this because they do not have anything to do with "light" but it's all in heat emitters (you see the light bulb because it's hot, and it's warning things around it, not because it's emitting light)..  

     

    Just to clarify, when we're talking about detecting "light" vs detecting "heat", we're talking about the same physical process -- in both instances, photons are being emitted by an object, and are being absorbed by a sensor. The only difference is the energy/frequency of the photons; "light" photons are more energetic that near infra red, which is more energetic than far infrared. So all thermal/optical/nv/radio/x-ray/etc sensors are doing the essentially the same thing, detecting photons, the only difference between them is the range of photon energies that they're sensitive to.

  2. The AF has yet to come up with a good argument to retire the A-10. And right now the AF's new tactic is to make defending the A-10 equivalent to Senators and Congressman keeping bases open in their voting districts even though keeping that base open is not necessary or sound. 

     

    Actually I'd say the blame for the impending A-10 retirement rests not with the USAF, but with Congress. Or, more specifically, with the Sequester that Congress forced upon the military. Everything I've heard from the USAF on this issue states that they'd love to keep the A-10, but that the only way to do so while their budget is being cut would be to sacrifice other aircraft that they deem are more critical, such as the F-35. And frankly, for our future military, the F-35 is more critical. If we want to stay competitive in the air in the coming decades, we'll eventually need to replace our aging F-16s and F-18s, and the F-35 is now the only realistic option for doing so. The A-10 is great for low intensity COIN, but it's just not built for the realities of modern high intensity conflict.

     

     

    “The Air Force was very clear. They said, ‘If we could afford it, we want to keep it, but if they have to keep it because Congress wants them to, what else are they going to have to cut?” said Mark Gunzinger, a former top Air Force official who’s now a senior fellow with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.

    Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2014/12/a-10-warthog-iraq-isil-113684.html#ixzz3PDJO8u2S

  3. But the 'acts of God' are intervening EVERY battle of CM, that's the whole point.

    The same is true of any competitive endeavor to some extent. I'd argue that the typical ladder game of CM is more "fair" and less dependent on luck than a single hand of poker. It's only when you play many hands of poker that luck gets averaged out, and the same principle can apply to competitive CM as well.

  4. Use left-click-drag to move the camera, right-click-drag to pan.

    Thanks. That's a little better. Unfortunately the screen response is the exact opposite of what I expect. Clicking and moving the mouse towards you (towards the bottom of the screen) has the effect of making the map move away from you. It's not dragging it's repelling.

    Don't think of it as dragging the map; rather you're dragging the floating camera. Then it makes sense :). Keep using it and I bet you'll feel at home in no time with the method Erik mentioned. IMHO, once you get used to it, it's far superior to the CMx1 system.

  5. Hmmm... strange.

    Still I'd wager in a RT game against a human opponent you might think differently. Sure you have to memorize more keys, but it's so much more efficient once you do. And it doesn't take that long to learn tbh ;). (especially when it's F for Fast, H for Hide, etc... it makes sense)

    I've played many RT games of CMSF against human opponents, and I found the relative system served me quite well. I'd wager I'm just as fast with the relative system as you are with the direct system :). Again, to each his own.

  6. Just got home from my commute .. what did I miss what did I miss ?? OMG.. Like 3 pages of posts.. beta testers claiming they aren't releasing the demo, others claiming its coming out this evening after work, still others saying its coming out friday .. MADNESS !! ITS ABSOLUTE MAYHEM IN HERE !

    Refresh.. refresh

    Only 3 pages? You must have a short commute!

  7. It's pretty unforgivable to not have a multiplayer lobby for a multiplayer game these days. Are we in 1997?

    It's a small developer with limited time and resources, making a very large and complicated game. The time they spend making a multiplayer lobby would be time they could've spent on things like randomly generated maps, or TCP/IP WEGO, or any of the other wishlist items that, according to most fans of the game, are far more desirable than a lobby.

  8. I'm no expert either, but I believe most Soviet tanks had lrf's by the time of the Afghan war.

    Starting in 1974, T-55 tanks received the KTD-1 or KTD-2 laser rangefinder in an armoured box over the mantlet of the main gun

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-55

    T-62 Obr.1975 – T-62 Obr.1972 equipped with a KTD-1 or KTD-2 laser rangefinder in an armoured box over the main armament. It has concealed bolts around the commander's cupola.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-62

  9. This would change radically, if, e.g. we were allowed to target question markers.

    This! Also I dream of some way to make units automatically target the question marks with suppressive fire. You could add another state order similar to 'Hide' or 'Deploy Weapon', maybe call it 'Weapons Free'. And then for example you can set a machine gun team to weapons free, and they'll automatically open up on any possible contacts in their LOF. With this functionality, maintaining C2 links would be extremely advantageous for covering assaults and the like. The way it is now, I do it as much for role playing purposes as I do for actual gameplay benefit.

  10. FWIW, I ran the demo (and now the full game) just fine with Windows 7 64bit. When you were presented with the black screen, how long did you wait? Did you try clicking the mouse, pressing escape, anything like that? If you're not even getting to the menu, the game might be crashing when it tries to play the intro video, so perhaps a codec issue is at fault here.

  11. I agree with Cid250, a 9500GT is a poor choice for a new computer. That's a budget card, not intended for serious gaming use. Not a good pairing with a comparatively high end CPU. CM:N will run fair on it I'm sure, but you won't get much mileage with many other current games. If you look around for good deals you can get an Nvidia 470 or an ATI 5850 for ~$200US.

  12. Well, perhaps don't use Snowballs than - Though, I would wonder if BFC would have the final ownership over all said material within the new Astan mod/game (whatever it exactly is).

    My point being, I've been surprised by the lack of differing units (cosmetic only) for the UI (for both Blue and Red). Which makes me believe it must be more complicated than with most other games. In that to date, with the various Astan user made missions that have already been put out....that we haven't seen such cosmetic only modded Astan looking units to be shown on the UI representing / depicting them.

    I don't think I'm completely clear on what exactly you're asking for then. Are you asking why we can't create and import new unit models for the Afghan theatre? Are you talking about unit textures (which can and have been modded by the community dozens of times)? Or are you talking about modding menu items, like country flags (this also is possible and has already been done by the community several times)?

  13. "I wonder why BFC did this. Must be a reason."

    Ignorance?

    You don't give BFC much credit, do you? To reiterate what has already been said: the unit type is completely independent of the unit's skill/experience. If the scenario designer so chooses, he can give you a Green Marine sniper team that will be outshot by Regular Syrian snipers. Not very realistic, but that's the whole point of the game's built in flexibility. It just happens that the people who designed the Marine campaign chose to give the player Elite snipers, and the people who designed the Brit campaign seemed to favor Veteran snipers.

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