A Canadian Cat

Yep. Over at theBlitz.club the most we have ever had for a Scenario of the Month is 20 players with an average of 10. We have a 63% completion rate. So this is twice as big as our biggest Scenario of the Month tournament.

The timings seem expected to me. Nothing is taking longer or shorter than a typical PBEM turn. Ack Oooops. I will remember that. Oh that's not good. Yeah we all need to be playing 1.06. I thought older versions would not even connect to the PBEM+ system? Or my memory is faulty. Probably should reject older versions though...

Such as the ever popular Space Lobsters of Doom

Yeah the more I think about it the more I see the validity to Steve's point that Ukraine might want to consider letting some of the pre 2014 territories go. Why take on such insurgencies when you don't have to? Obviously that's Ukraine's decision but likely worth considering. The problem is this will still only bring lasting peace if the government in Russia has a better attitude. Of course it's a peace that a Ukrainian government could hold on to easier than trying control a place that the Russians are meddling directly in but it still does not give a long term peace. For that we need something different in Moscow. Well you paint a dire picture and no doubt a shattered Russia would cause lots of problems. The thing is it feels a bit like when rich people say "it's hard being rich, there are so many problems you poor people just don't have" - LOL "yeah I'll take those problems in exchange for my current ones thanks". We have had decades upon decades upon decades of first the Soviet Union and then Russia ****ing around in other peoples business to everyone's (but a few rich criminals) determent. Part of me would like to try living without those ***-holes having that much power. Yes, I realize my rich people's problems analogy totally breaks down because while a rich person can go back to being poor a shattered and broken Russia cannot be put back together again later. I still feel very curious about what the world would be like without a powerful fascist benefactor ****ing around in countless governments around the world. Yes, that would be ideal. My issue is I just do not see how that is a likely out come. It is probably the least likely end state for Russia.

LOL no thanks. We don't want to delay this any more.

Ouch that last turn did hurt.

Near the end of the clip the guy with the camera hits a tree right in front of him with a round. Gave me a chuckle. Are we sure this is combat footage and not training?

@BFCElvis used an over the top example but just think about all the fans of <insert favourite equipment here> that would like to tweak its capabilities just a bit more in line with the reputation they have in their own heads. What happens to PBEM? Do I have to play with your idea of <insert favourite equipment here> or do you have to play with mine? Hard pass thanks I'll take consistent capabilities thanks. LOL so they want to recycle their own content?

I hate it when my vehicles start getting peppered with .50cal in CMCW. It means that vehicle is about to have a really, really bad day in about 2s.

Earlier today someone used the phrase "civilian Girkin" and it reminded me I wanted to ask does anyone know the status of @Grigb? We haven't heard from him in a long time. I don't think I missed any earlier posts about him. Anyone have an idea? His profile pages says he last posted Oct 10th and last visited Nov 6th.

Reordered for my benefit While a part of me would also feel good about a few million Russians feeling a part of what their government is dishing out... I think we can look back at history and see that this just does not happen. Has it ever? I am unaware of any time hitting civilian targets "weakened the resolve of the enemy". People throughout history have said those kinds of words and it just doesn't come true. Normally it strengthens the resolve of the enemy. Don't forget the Russian people are not being told anything that resembles the truth so having the Ukrainians make their lives more miserable would feed into the propaganda that the Ukrainians are evil etc. It would also give Putin something to talk about to distract from the way the war is going inside Ukraine. So, yeah I am nearly certain that doing that would help Putin not hinder him.

The problem with predictive analytics is with is capturing the variability based on minute variations of individual engagements. Take CM for example. I think that we can all agree that we've got all the essential combat elements covered pretty well with physics based equations that reasonably reflect reality. Picture time and money invested in more detailed accounting for emerging capabilities, such as UGVs and EW. Now what? To get meaningful data you have to run a single scenario thousands of times. Given the hundreds, if not thousands, of permutations that can happen with equipment, terrain, weather, soft factors, operational constraints, ammo loads, etc. that's a huge amount of situations that have to be examined to know what is the optimal combination for a nation to shoot for in terms of armaments. Pretty daunting, but I suppose it could be done with a major investment of time and money. However, for the millions of runs through the thousands of scenarios hits yet another snag... tactical variability. We CMers all know how extremely small slices of a larger battle can result in wildly different end results. 10 tanks advancing with infantry might produce dramatically different end results if a couple of tanks are knocked out before advancing across a field vs. after. What happens if the infantry is stripped away in the first minute of the battle vs. remaining with the tanks 40 minutes later? How would a real life commander alter his tactical battle plan after losing 1 tank vs. 2 tanks vs. 4 tanks? All of this stuff can not be predetermined as it comes up during the course of a battle. Someone is going to have to figure out how to assess what the cause is for each of these variations on outcome, because simply analyzing the end result doesn't inform much of anything without understanding how the end came about. I don't think that predicting the outcome of tactical battles is where the value is. I mean someone would find it interesting but on the battlefield what is interesting is *where* those tactical battles are doing to happen and *whose* coming your way. If you know that then you can react before the battle happens and re-balance the fight in your favour. For example: Attackers want to hit the defenders where they are weakest and arrange to have an overwhelming force locally. If the predictive AI could let the defender know where an attack is likely coming based on the enemy's troop movements etc then those defenders can deploy reinforcements *before* the battle is engaged and suddenly the attacker no longer has the overwhelming force they expected. Now local commanders have a much better chance in the tactical battle then they would have without the prediction of what's coming. Yes, I'm a little behind on my forum reading so hopefully this hasn't already been discussed.

Well that's encouraging. out of order.... That's not. They don't seem to care much about what gets hit. Are you saying that firing an S300 at a power substation would be ineffective? I would worry they would just launch 20 instead and cause all kinds of havoc.

Fitting that @rocketman would find the info on the number of rockets Interesting. They have a lot left. Crap. Especially since they are using the S300 missiles against ground targets. The tweet from the Ukrainian defence minister: Obviously the above has generated a lot of articles - but they are all based on these numbers. I suppose we have to wonder how accurate these are. With the US and allies intelligence the UA may well have pretty accurate numbers. That doesn't mean we get the perfect picture here of course. But as it has been said before the UA tends to play it straight so there is that. Last month the Australian Broad Casting company wrote this: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-10-17/explainer-what-is-the-state-of-russian-missile-arsenal/101538356 Which has a lot less detail but seems to be close enough to the spirit. They are starting to run low but not out of their most advanced missiles but they have loads and loads of other less accurate ones left.

It is rather astounding. But we see that repeated on lots of topics. Some crack pot repeatedly says one thing when any one can see it's just wrong and yet the keep doing it and some people seem to keep listening. I do find it bizarre though. Exactly, holding back what? More T62s I suppose I do want to segue into something that I am curious about: Where are all the long range missiles the RA keeps using to hit civilian buildings and disrupt the power system all over Ukraine coming from? I remember months ago there were charts showing they were running out and yet over the last few weeks they stepped up attacks dramatically. Of all the things that we have seen people predict and monitor the seemingly unending supply of Russian missiles is something I've been surprised by. Everything else in the war has gone about how reasonable people expected, except for the long range missile supply. I am curious about peoples thoughts on this.

Very well said - on both counts. Canada has has a few high profile cases of soldiers forgetting that and civilians were very, very unhappy about it. I dare say it derailed the normal news for a long time even when investigations were done and those that crossed the line were punished. I, also a civilian, spent a lot of time explaining things and trying to share that the right things were being done and the sky was not actually falling. It was an uphill battle.

Everything is fine until one day they are not! Sweet perhaps today is the day. Or later this week - I'm good with that too. Yeah Kadyrov was always in the best position. He likely never wanted control of the entire federation. Or more accurately knows he cannot achieve that. But he is already in control of a nice chunk of his area. He can afford to do nothing much and wait for the house of cards to fall at someone else's hand and just declare himself whatever he likes and keep the chaos away from his little area.

I like Reddit. It's one of the best social media sites for curating your own feed. I just see the posts from the sub reddits I subscribe too. So, it's easy to avoid dumb *** memes (looking at your FB) and nutters posting about their nutty political theories (looking at you Twitter). I see just the things I want to. Since I don't follow the Ukrainian war on Reddit (yikes too much garbage) I had to go look. I searched for "Russian bodies Bakhmut". The results contain lots of videos some with dramatic headlines. I don't see evidence of anything extraordinary. I found several videos of what appear to be Russian casualties but nothing like a massive slaughter per-say. There are several videos of trench networks with half a dozen to a dozen bodies and a few area shots of compounds with similar numbers of bodies. They do not match the wild head lines and frankly nothing more than I would have expected if a platoon was overrun and did not surrender quickly. Edited to add my comment reflects the disconnect between the headlines and the actual videos. All four of the videos I watched were clearly from different places and if they were from when and where reported then clearly the UA kicked some serious ***. It's just like headlines like "bodies are piled up like cordwood" do not match the actual content.

The code is the same between the Steam release and the BFC release. You can play using Matrix's PBEM+ with the BFC install once it's all setup and available. This patch release does not include that PBEM+ work. So there will be another release coming to support that.

double post

Yes, that is still the correct procedure.

Correct it has been fixed. Be aware that saves with the bug baked in (like the one linked above by @Grey_Fox) still show the problem during playback. Things will only be seen as fixed the next turn. Even then the ? icons will remain even though the HT should never have seen them. Going forward with new games all should be well.

Just FYI this file has the bug baked into the first turn replay. So, when the fix comes, the replay will be the same with the HTs still seeing through smoke. Once you advance to the next turn the fully spotted enemy units disappear and turn into ? icons. Your HTs cannot forget what they saw but no more seeing though the smoke :-).

Very wise. I'm hoping the UA forces make some good progress regardless if its a real withdrawal or just a regrouping. Take the space given and crank up the pressure again.

Thanks