Chazz

Sigh...Again, no need for the "it never happened to me that means it doesn't exist" assumptions. While I do most of my gaming outside of Steam (if that wasn't obvious already), I still manage to use it once or twice a week. So I am talking about everything updated with latest patches not ancient history. Now even if Uplay is slightly worse, Steam still falls in the same bucket as far as I am and many others are concerned. Because otherwise, there simply won't be any demand or reason for something like GOG.com to exist at all.

Really? we are going to do the whole ''It works for me, that means it work for everyone, unless said person is a retard" song and dance? Well sir, I will have you know I indeed have a very stable internet connection so technically speaking I don't even need the offline mode. Yet Steam in all its brilliance sometimes decides the there is no internet and so it refuses to work. Yes that's right, it does not even offer offline mode most of the time, and when it does sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. It is all a big toss up. Now that's all technical issues that (should) be solved by valve eventually. I don't care about those. I do care that I am using -I will say it again- an intrusive DRM platform. You can be arrogant and dismissive about it as much as you want, but the rise and success of stuff like GOG.com and Humble and that most indie Kickstarters can't even make it without offering a DRM-Free option proves that there are a lot of people like me out there who prefer to have their gaming outside of annoying third party platforms thank you very much.

Personally I have no problem with the way Battlefront publishes their games, in fact if they ever move to steam I would prefer to have a non-steam option available for me. There are many reasons for that, that I wont get into here, but since someone mentioned it, for me Steam offline mode is a joke, 9 times out of 10 it doesn't work. Most importantly IMO is that comparison with Matrix games is moot. Matrix problem is their outrageous pricing schemes not their choice of distribution platform. Now some people THINK that if they go on steam they would have to reduce their prices in sales and whatnot. But if they manage to keep their exact prices on steam as well then we have not benefited anything now did we? Actually it would be a net loss for me since the games are now riddled with an intrusive DRM platform (Because of that I don't buy any Steam game that is more than 10$, the games simply lose their value to me)

If I had to guess, I would say it is probably "Speed and Power" or maybe "Speed and POWAAAAAA".

I have been revisiting shock force recently and I too have been having a surprising level of success with the thermal equipped T-72s against both Abrams and Challengers (I do not own the NATO module). The key is to get them into positions where they have a high chance of both spotting and shooting first, so that typically means putting them stationary in an ambush position looking sideways into the potential path of the Abrams approach. That way they are likely to score a nice side shot as well. If approaching from the front you can forget about any favourable exchange ratio with Abrams. Still, you could potentially still come up on top in the end if you have overwhelming numbers and again being stationary versus moving Abrams. I am curious to see how much tougher are the Abrams in CMBS compared to the ones we had in Shock Force which were no pushovers to be certain but definitely manageable. Anyways, Nice AAR and Generalship so far Bil, keep up the good work.