BlackAlpha

Or maybe you will be able to put it on an IFV and use it to kill tanks easily. Combine that with more robust anti missile protection systems and maybe the MBT will become obsolete (gun and protection surpassed by other vehicles). But we'll need to wait and see how the railgun develops. And we'll also need to wait and see if any new revolutionary power sources, that are small enough for tanks, come into existence. It will take a very, very long time... Dozens of years, at least.

Well, if not a MBT, then what exactly? So, what's your idea on how the MBT will evolve? Personally, I think the MBT will stick around for a while and will be doing an arms race with missile based weapons. There are still a lot of possibilities with protection systems for tanks, you can make them still much bigger and thus more effective, but missiles are near their physical limit, not much you can improve there (anti tank MIRV or swarm variants would be pretty huge). For that reason, I suspect APS will at some point surpass missile based weapons and will make tanks nearly immune to missile based weapons. Like panzersaurkrautwerfer mentioned, I think the only possible game changer for tanks might be a railgun IF we can manage to create the technology to fit it on something as small as a tank.

Yup, things evolved, just like the tank currently is evolving. That's partially what I meant.

But machine guns didn't make infantry obsolete, so that's a bad comparison as well. Instead of talking about historical anecdotes, it's better to look at how things stand in real life. Are tanks obsolete at the moment? Are tanks being phased out? No and no. In fact, countries are designing new tanks. Why do you think that is so?

I think you are missing the point. The Javelin is not as commonly available as Muskets were (far from it, in fact), hence your comparison is wrong.

You forget one huge difference. The musket was a soldier's primary, while a Javelin AT launcher is not. At least for now, you won't see Javelins in every single squad. The Javelin also has limitations, like the time it takes for a Javelin CLU to get ready. Or the few minutes you get to fire the missile after enabling the missile seeker (if the tank moves out of sight during that time, then that's one less battery for you and more downtime). It's also heavy as hell. The Javelin is not perfect and has weak links of its own.

It's not hard to imagine that in a tank heavy environment everybody switches to AP, then when you're fairly sure the tanks have been taken care off, you switch back to the regular mix. It also depends on how you organize the tanks. If like often happens in Combat mission, you split up a tank platoon and send individual tanks to different locations (bad idea but whatever), then they will carry whatever ammo they deem is necessary for the environment. But then there's still the problem that the first shot, which is most likely AP in a tank environment, is used against lighter vehicles and is always highly successful, right? I don't think I've ever seen a tank shoot at a lighter vehicle, over-penetrate, and end up not killing it. Panzersaurkrautwerfer explained how it's possible to react for tanks so quickly. To summarize, it's technology and training. Technology allows the vehicle itself to aim and shoot very quickly. The training gives you multiple ways to engage targets. There's a long way of calling out targets and calling for permission. Then there's an intermediate way when things need to be sped up in certain situations. And finally, there's a very fast way in which the gunner/commander is given the freedom to decide to shoot straight away, enabling them to shoot within seconds, pretty much as fast as the vehicle is capable of aiming and firing.

That's what makes it the most fun, in my opinion. I wish all maps were like that. One thing I don't like is that in most cases, when there's a large map, it's completely filled up with units everywhere. That's probably why many people don't like big maps. But just because the map is big, doesn't mean there have to be loads of units.

Yeah, that's one very important thing to keep in mind, the scale in Black Sea is different. You aren't going to see hundreds of tanks rolling through a country side. The engine probably couldn't support it, anyway.

Yes, being able to pick a number for both sides would be awesome!

This wouldn't be the first ceasefire. So, I'm skeptical.

I only know some things I've read from some documents here and there, so correct me if I'm wrong... The old Soviet doctrine could be summarized as a zerg rush, but instead of running into a brick wall over and over, they'd try to go as much as possible around it or weaken a small part of it and then break through as deep and as fast as possible. Their air assault brigades were meant to mostly flank the enemy by landing troops next to or behind the enemy, or harass the enemy much further behind enemy lines ahead of the Soviet main assault. You require a lot of helicopters to do this, so they'd have some pretty large groups of them. But I somehow doubt they'd suicide their helicopters onto a heavily defended enemy line. When dealing with heavy enemy defenses, I imagine they'd be more careful in the same way NATO uses their helicopters. The thing to keep in mind in Flashpoint Campaigns is that in a lot of scenarios you are technically not in the front, but the Soviets have already broken through the main defensive line and have already begun pushing through, and you are somewhere behind the front line, tasked with delaying/halting the Soviet advance. In such scenarios it makes sense for the Soviets to send groups of gunships to sweep the area ahead, without any support, and try to recon and secure the area ahead for the main assault that is somewhere behind them. If the game was capable of it, the gunships would also try to drop off their troops in strategic positions. Their helicopters may behave sometimes a in a suicidal manner, but that's a different topic, that's because of the AI. Most games have problems with AI (almost all games fail to create a smart AI). So, don't mind the way the AI uses their helicopters... That said, I'm not sure these days you'd see anyone use helicopters in such a way. Things were different back then.

I did some testing and played a bunch of battles with Bradleys vs Russian T-72 and T-90A tanks. T-72 tanks don't have a jamer. T-90 tanks do have a jammer. Against the T-72 tanks, the Bradleys never missed (assuming they didn't lose line of sight). Against the T90A tanks, the Bradleys sometimes had that thing happen that the OP shows in his video (in the first post) - the missile goes way off target. So, it looks like the TOW missile can get spoofed in this game, but most of the time it does seem to hit.

I think the important part is at the bottom. Has Russia figured out how to spoof the TOW or not? Can their tanks emit a similar signal as the TOW launcher? But I guess nobody knows.

Just a guess, I've no idea if this is what the Russian tanks are capable of, but maybe they are creating fake (IR?) signals that resemble the signal on the back of the TOW missile, which confuses the firing computer of the TOW launcher because it doesn't know anymore where the missile is exactly, and so then the firing computer gives wrong corrections to the missile, making it go all over the place?

Well, from what I've seen, neither Ukraine nor Russia care much for civilian casualties. If there's a military target that is worth shelling, they will do so, doesn't matter if it's in the middle of a town or not, and they don't use precision munitions. I could be wrong, but I was always under the impression that in urban areas they used precision strikes to minimize collateral damage, no?

I think you misunderstood. I don't think people are saying that reinforcements are unrealistic or unfair. What people are saying is that having the enemies teleport on top of the player is unrealistic and unfair.

Well, a few things can be done to fix this: - Bigger maps can be used, while still limiting the enemies to the smaller area on the map. This will then make the player focus on the smaller area where the enemies are, and then hopefully when the reinforcements spawn in, the player won't be near them. This way the player can also take in account enemy reinforcements in a realistic manner that will require setting up proper defenses and such. - Marking the enemy reinforcement zone in advance can be done as well, so that the player knows where the reinforcements may come from and thus the player will know how to avoid situations where the enemy teleports on top of the player. - Giving the player a warning before the enemies spawn in, like a 15 minute warning, and mark the reinforcement zone. This gives the player time to get away from where the enemies will spawn in. - A combination of the above. From a game design perspective, I'd say don't use reinforcements on small maps or do give the player a warning on where the enemy reinforcements may come from, so that the player knows what gameplay limitations there are (ie. can't flank around certain areas because there's no way to secure the flank/rear when there's an imminent threat of teleporting enemies).

Not sure what you mean, I don't know about world war 2, but the way it works in real life (and in game), as you come around the corner you would rotate the turret towards the next corner if you suspect there might be an enemy there and if your front is (mostly) clear. The video shows why you want to do that, it allows the tank to react faster and get the first shot off. Whoever shoots first wins, so it's pretty important to do that. It's a bit similar to infantry tactics, you want someone to cover every angle. The difference is that if you come to a crossroad, you need to take a risk, because there usually isn't enough space to have one tank watch left and at the same time have one tank watch right. However, if you got a whole bunch of armored vehicles, you can then do this thing that infantry does where one vehicle quickly goes a bit left and covers left, while another goes quickly a bit right and covers right, while the rest move in between them forwards. It's not perfect, but it can get the job done if you suspect there are enemy tanks nearby. That's not the only way of doing things, of course. There are different tactics/SOPs for different situations.

Well, the download speed is pretty unstable. It changes between 300 and 1000 KB/s. It has been like that since release (if not longer). Such an unstable connection could explain why people are getting corrupt downloads and downloads that suddenly stop. I'd go ask the file sharing provider (Citrix Sharefile?) what's up and why their servers are acting up like that. As other people have suggested, you can also provide an alternative download with a bunch of smaller files as a temporary solution.

A coop campaign, or just coop missions.

Well, in real life, you have more toys at your disposal, like anti-radiation missiles (ARM), jamming or the ability to time an artillery strike together with an airstrike (SEAD). But I guess that doesn't answer your question of how to deal with Tunguskas in game... Umm... Well, since we are discussing how to deal with anti air units in game, maybe we should suggest to the devs to give us more options to deal with AA, like the above examples and such.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think things like the SS-26 are used to take out strategic targets, like military bases, concentrations of military vehicles, etc. It's expensive and creates a really big boom. So, you want to make it really count when you decide to use it. Rocket artillery, like the M270 or Grad, could be used on the scale of combat mission, but the question is, will it be fun? I don't imagine it will be, too powerful. But that's just a guess.

Well, I'm not going to tell you how to run your PR because you've made it clear many times that no one tells you what to do, but keep in mind that people pay you good MONEY and in return they expect a good product and good service. It's perfectly reasonable for them to get annoyed and start to talk crap when you don't deliver.

@Steve You can't blame people for getting annoyed when they pay money and get a horrible service experience in return. No one is to blame for that but Battlefront. After all, people pay money to you, not Amazon. You can see many people complain about the launch of the game. Don't attack your customers by ridiculing them and talking down on them, no matter how annoyed you are by their posts, that simply won't help. If you don't like it that your customers are complaining, do a better job next time. I don't want to speak for everyone, but I'm fairly sure people are willing to forgive if you act more humble and respectful. If you don't, expect to rub more people the wrong way.