BlackAlpha

You don't have to be precise when saturating an area. There are quite a few success/horror stories about Grads in the real life conflict. So, they are being used successfully. As for counter battery fire, like with any other artillery piece, you fire and reposition.

Well, my download just died completely, 0 KB/s. Guess you might be right. I'll try again tomorrow or the day after tomorrow, depending on when their servers decide to work properly.

Three/four hours until download is done. ... Oh well...

Let me rephrase that. Here's the basics of combat: Whatever you do, make sure there's a safe route for you to retreat, because in combat unexpected things often happen, forcing you to retreat and try again. If there's no safe route for you to retreat, you should reconsider what you are doing. So, in the case of that video, you do not want to run down the hill into the open because if you get caught in the open, you have nowhere to go and you'll die (it looks like at least one of them got hit once or twice, so he'll probably die, the other guy got very lucky). It's better to stay behind the hills. And that's what they did at the end, after getting shot to pieces. But hey, they were probably untrained which is why they just drove down that hill thinking it was perfectly safe.

Yes, there were hills. Suiciding will just get you needlessly killed. You either try something else or you run away to live another day. I recommend in game you don't try the same those guys did, you'll just get your units killed. That video shows how effective ATGMs are against vehicles. Large open areas = deadly.

I'm not saying I support what Russia is doing, but that's another thing that everybody does these days (in one way or another). So, I'm not really surprised.

Don't take it so serious. It's all part of information warfare. It's just the same as when Kiev says they never bombed any urban areas. You can get worked up over it, but then remember that lying is simply part of the game. Russia isn't the first one to lie during war and won't be the last. Everybody does it. Such is war.

I don't think they survived the first hit. They were going at a fairly high speed, so when they get hit, they'll keep on rolling for a while, even if the vehicle got knocked out and everyone inside is hurting bad. It then may look like the vehicle is still up, but it's actually knocked out at that point. The vehicle (it's hard to see, armored car, BRDM?) doesn't look like it can survive even a RPG, and I'm fairly sure they fired ATGMs at it. The guys who got out could be bleeding badly, for all we know.

Ditto. The AI is unable to make tactical decisions (or in gaming terms, micro), so you have to do it for them (you have to micro them) to get a somewhat realistic tactical response. A minute delay in between each tactical decision is just too long and will get people killed needlessly and slow things down too much. Maybe that was realistic in WW2 without the radios and much lower skilled soldiers, I don't know, but things are a lot more dynamic in modern warfare. Certain tactics are also simply not possible using the turn based mode because they require more micro than is possible with the turn based controls. That said, the replay function in turn based mode makes it excellent for creating videos. Like co-op? Yes, please!

Does that even matter? The link in the quote doesn't work. Any idea how they came to the conclusion that the Chinese would supposedly win? Did they out-range the Americans with better missiles and then ran? Did the stealth not make any difference? Is the Chinese stealth better, making American missiles ineffective? I don't get it.

Didn't you know? They take their cleanliness very seriously: http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=e84_1404399153

Please post a link next time. It's important because there are lots of people going around the internet making stuff up. They post quotes that are made up. So, if you take the trouble to properly quote, then please post the link as well. Here's the link: http://www.osce.org/ukraine-smm/135671 I won't rule out a chemical weapon attack, but it's important to note what kind of spasm those soldiers have. If it's muscles near the eye or throat, then it may be white phosphorus (or similar) related. Also, I'm not sure what the symptoms are of that Russian type incendiary/WP artillery rounds that were supposedly used a while ago by Ukrainian troops. Maybe Russia is using a similar chemical/incendiary weapon.

Well, I think it may be the same as when people mention the AK-47. Sure, it has its flaws and something more modern may be better. But it still shoots bullets that hurt. Basically, even older gear can be used effectively under certain conditions. As long as you stick to those conditions, the older gear can still be deadly.

There are no civilians in the game, so you can use WP anywhere you want without having to worry. Technically, you are not allowed to use it in civilian areas (with a few exceptions), but technically you are also not allowed to blindly bomb civilian areas using any kind of artillery or airstrike, and technically there are a few other things you aren't really allowed to do. But you can still do all of that in CM, the game doesn't punish you for performing war crimes of any kind. So, I don't see why WP wouldn't be allowed in game, at the very least it can be used to create smoke screens or weaken enemy concentrations as is its use in real life.

That is not what you said previously: ""Serious research" of any worth takes a lot of time and energy. That comes at a cost. Why on Earth would we want to spend our precious resources on something that we don't think is going to work?" EDIT: Certain things you said in the past (some in this thread) about Steam seem to be simply false, which makes me think you didn't really look into Steam or you only did half the job (you only got half the facts) before making up your mind already. Bleh, I'm going to call it because you are quite stubborn.

Ahah, that explains everything. You never looked into it, you never considered it. And thus you do not know what you are talking about. Seriously, at this point you are as qualified to talk about this subject as any other person on this forum who has read the publicly available text on Steam's website. Instead of people asking you to go to Steam, they need to ask you to do your research and consider it (after doing the research). And no, you will not go broke by doing this sort of research, a freaking intern can even do this sort of work. I'm not asking you to commit to anything, you simply gather all the information you need to come to an informed decision on whether you want to commit.

Yeah, so I keep getting the impression from you that you guys never seriously looked into it! Why not do some serious research and figure out what exactly the pros and cons are? You might change your mind! Either more people will buy it than they would've using your store and you will make a profit, or you won't make a profit and you'll pull the game from the store.

You don't have to be kidding about that in this day and age. They could very well try a crowd funding campaign. It can also double as a survey to find out the potential of their product.

Well, Steve is giving us the impression they are "healthy", not drowning and won't be drowning in 3 months either.

But if a three month down time will kill the company, then I'd say they are borderline dead and they need to start looking at new ways to make more money to stay afloat.

That's the thing that perplexes me about this whole thing. Why beat around the bush? Why hasn't Battlefront done more research into this whole thing and actually tried to sell something on Steam to see what's up? I just can't take the whole "Steam is death" argument seriously...

More like times 2. Steam has "100 million active accounts" according to Valve: http://store.steampowered.com/news/14478/

Not exactly. Each men gets 1 HP (anything can kill it), that's true. But the primary weapons are simulated on each person in the squad/team. As their numbers drop, their anti infantry capability decreases. So, a 15 men squad is more effective at killing other infantry than a group with only a single person (everybody else in his group died) or a two person sniper team (at AR range).

Battle Academy is as firmly grounded in reality as the Wargame series is. The unit compositions in that game are not realistic either. A kill or no kill system is not realistic, it's too simplistic. In Wargame they use hitpoints, armor and different kind of damage values to somewhat simulate armor and such. Generally speaking, if something can kill a unit, it will kill it; if it can't kill it, then it might damage it which will impact morale and/or the functionality of the vehicle. If no damage at all is possible, it might still impact the functionality (for example, grenade launchers fired at a tank). It results in more than just a kill or no kill. It's a bit similar to what CM has with partially damaged vehicles and morale but in Wargame it's way more simplified, of course. Not sure what you mean with the first line... It's pretty interesting to see what people define as a wargame, there's a lot of variations apparently... May I remind you that the following games fall into the RTS/real-time category: Combat Mission, Command: Modern Air Naval Operations. Yet, they are pretty hardcore wargames. Real time doesn't exclude a game from being a wargame as you can see. Personally, I would never put Battle Academy in the wargame category. It's merely a turn based strategy (TBS) game. For me, a wargame has to resemble real life in at least a semi-realistic fashion. With that, I mean it has to have somewhat realistic engagements. I wouldn't put many so called wargames into the wargame category for that reason; they are merely turn based strategy games that are overly simplified and they are not realistic enough for my taste.

Not sure what you mean. A standard RTS mechanism is building a base and then building the units. You don't do that in the Wargame series. You have a limited amount of units available that you can send in as reinforcements, they arrive off the map and you then gain control of them. Which by the way makes the game fit in the real time tactics category. Battle Academy is not hardcore, at all.