A Canadian Cat

Hey my dad went back to University at 56, finished his degree and has been taking a course per semester ever since - He's 82 now. You are never too old to learn.

Don't know about the Chinese, but the Russians here seem to be doing OK.....Maybe they are all Putin's elite FSB agents?  In general I was referring to citizens with no external exposure - typically because of language barriers. However my previous comments: This apply to a lot that goes on here. So, no I don't think they are doing so great because they seem to believe your line that the Western Media is just the same as theirs but controlled by other governments and therefore even though they seem to be aware that their state media is propaganda they don't actually act like the realize that and instead just parrot the same stuff here. The uncomfortable truth is that despite the Western Medias various problems and our governments' various flaws they are not at all the equivalent to the State controlled media of the Putin Regime or the Putin Regime itself.

Ah I see what you mean. Might be nice to see more of that in a module, we can ask. Actually you just did

Well yeah BS does suck and there are problems of media ownership. There is one difference though. In a country like Russian and China where *all* the media are controlled by the same group - the government - there is no dissenting information. There are no corrections or retractions (unless by chance that is what the government wants). So, while we in the west can get differing view points and competition to get the fact straight people in Russia and China cannot. Media in the west often point out each other's failings too. All of that is a huge difference. It may not be perfect but the government is not in charge of the message from the start to the finish. Oh and I should add that the distrusting of news sources is a trap that dictators like us to fall into too. How many times have you heard someone say "I don't trust any of that lying media" and then turn around and repeat the government talking points nearly word for word - which they got from the state media. Think hard and see if you can catch your self doing it. I try to pay attention to that in my self. See above. Ironically one of the problems of Twitter, Google and Facebook is they try to not give an editorial bent - but that just leaves them free to be used and manipulated with bots or pretend accounts.

It used to be that pre-orders got a few days jump on the rabble at large. The last few times that hasn't been the case. Which pretty much just leaves the above...

Glad to hear it. I honestly am not always sure While the information to model them will not be an obstacle that still doesn't fit with in the game's back story or time frame. I personally would love more then one CM game based on earlier cold war periods or a game reflective of the actual Ukrainian invasion those would have to be new games. At least based on BFC's current business model.

Wow. Short comings aside there is no comparison between the two problems.

Oh man. Feeling a bit annoyed today are we? That is just silly. BFC works hard to have CM model the equipment as it is. Making those determinations are not always easy. Doubly so for gear that is just rolling out or still being tested. I would not expect to see any of this new gear in CMBS because of its planned roll out after the CMBS timelines. Unless BFC changes the game back story significantly or makes a newer game set in 202x I don't think we are going to get to play with any of this new gear.

Ewwww that is sucky.

That's a cool plan. How many AVRE rounds does it take to bring down a big stone bridge?

Oh yeah - sorry - not sure when I'll get there...

Agreed Yeah, that's not it. Here's the thing, there are two broad categories of things that are "wrong" with the game: 1) actual bugs in the way the game is intended to run 2) design decisions that are limited by the nature of the limits of computing power When a bug is found no one, that I know, on the testing team feels threatened or maligned as an attack on their beloved game system. Of course the grants that a bug is actually found. The discussion and the so call defensiveness that you perceive is likely in the process of ironing out of what is and is not a bug. When a player declares "this is a bug" that is often (usually) not good enough for one of two reasons: it is not clear what they mean or there is no way to verify or repeat the problem. When testers or other players start asking questions about what the reporting player is talking about or asking for game saves that is not because they feel slighted that their beloved game is under attack. That is them trying to figure out what is going on so if this is a bug it can get reported. A further problem comes when others decide that they do not agree by declaring that this is not a bug. Some player don't like that since they seem to feel they know best. That could be my miss-perception but that is how it seems to me - and no I do not mean you singularly. In the case of design decision there is not a lot of point in continuing the discussion. The fact that some people just refuse to let things go or declare that the design decision is so wrong that it needs to be changed is unfortunate. Steve is aware of the compromises he and Charles have to make. They have made them. We have to live with them. Continuing to complain about it is nothing but annoying and is not very helpful. When someone like @sburke or @Bud Backer explain how they think of these things during game play (you know the usual inventive explanation for what happened) they are not trying to be defensive or dismissive they are genuinely trying to explain their way of moving on and playing the game.

Working on refining and sorting out a bug is not what @Thewood1 is talking about. There are bugs in the game. Players report them and testers try to narrow things down to get them fixed. The case of the running the wrong way from fire in the bocage is a bug. At not time did anyone say different. They said we were having trouble nailing it down so it could get fixed - very different. I believe that @Thewood1 is referring to players that report bugs that aren't bugs and cause a lot of churn. Or find actual bug or perceived bug and declare the game irretrievably broken. Or who demand a detailed explanation of how some aspect of the game works as if the lack of that information prevents enjoyment or proves there is a bug - or something I don't really get that desire. I am sure that if I have that wrong @Thewood1 will correct me. He is not shy aobut that. Regardless that is how I am interpreting these discussions. @PIATpunk, congratulations on your contribution. Yeah, I'm serious that is a very helpful contribution. Thank you.

Dictator. Clearly. It is enough to consider just press freedom: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_freedom_in_Russia https://rsf.org/en/russia https://rsf.org/en/news/russia-vladimir-putins-damning-record-press-freedom The back bone of a dictatorship is the quashing of press freedom. That is now you can then steal elections and make your opponents disappear all the while making convincing your population that all is well.

When we say "little green men" we are referring to the propaganda lie that Country A is not invading Country B because those solders clearly are not ours because they don't have our flags on their shoulders. It is a short hand way of referring to the lies that Putin's Government told during the invasion of Crimea and Easter Ukraine. The action in Kosovo that you are trying to create an equivalency for is not at all the same. No one lied about what was happening it was done all above board and based on information and events that happened during a long civil war. The action in the Ukraine was done under the cloak of lies and fake information, trumped up propaganda and with "plausible deniability". The fact that the Putin Government and a handful here still deny that the Russians invaded the Ukraine doesn't make it any less true. There is no equivalence between these two events.

Dropbox sucks make sure they get uploaded to www.thefewgoodmen.com/cm-mod-warehouse/ Right now @Bootie is busy getting this new site setup and the old content transferred over. Contact him directly and he will upload your mods to the new site.

I am not an expert either just want to impart that the game design decision for the leadership / morale penalty for splitting Soviet squads was done to reflect the doctrine they used and the less flexible NCO leadership. Regardless of if a member of the squad was labelled an assistant leader or not this is the design goal of the way splitting was handled. If a change was made to label someone the assistant that goal and the method to achieve it would not change. I found some comments direct from Steve here http://community.battlefront.com/topic/112368-discussion-of-soviet-offensive-tactics/?tab=comments#comment-1486838: Lots of interesting discussions around this an be found with this Google search: https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=site%3Acommunity.battlefront.com+soviet+squad+splitting

The Blitz is running two scenarios this month. Sign up for the July scenario of the Month has started over at the Blitz. This month the scenarios are: CMBN: CW Air Attack CMFI: TWC First Contact CMBS: Objective Delta The form post on theBlitz for sign up is here.

The Blitz is running two scenarios this month. Sign up for the July scenario of the Month has started over at the Blitz. This month the scenarios are: CMBN: CW Air Attack CMFI: TWC First Contact CMBS: Objective Delta The form post on theBlitz for sign up is here.

Yes, that set of orders should work - and I do it that way frequently. Typically it works. When it fails it is because I screwed the pause length. This only works if the embarking troops actually start to enter before the pause runs out. If the clock runs out before the first soldier mounts up then you are out of luck. If the pause clock is still running when the first guy gets in then the vehicle will remain after the pause is done to pick up the rest of the embarking soldiers. So, the problem is that the pause was ignored. I have seen that from time to time but so far it has been unverifiable / unreproducable - I don't have the save of the orders and I have never been able to get it to happen while I was trying to get it to. Sigh. About half the time it has happened I am really not sure I placed the pause order and the other half I cannot get it to happen again.

Let's do that shall we? Agreed - This was posted while I was writing my last...

https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu//dc.html?doc=4325676-Document-02-Mr-Hurd-to-Sir-C-Mallaby-Bonn Ah, seriously, have you read this? It is a summary of a conversation between the US Secretary of State and the German equivalent regarding the unification of Germany. Tt is not an agreement between any group of nations it is a discussion of positions. In it they also discuss the possibility of Soviet troops remaining stationed inside a united Germany. That is an interesting idea. I fee like I'm in the twilight zone. The strongest assertion you could make about this document was that the Germans wanted to reassure the USSR that unting Germany and remaining in NATO was not part of a plan to expand NATO. That is not the same a commitment to never allow additional nations. This is not evidence of a deal to never expand NATO.

Discussion is not a deal. Show me the treaty ratified by the signatory nations. No, this part of the thread is people trying point out the inaccuracies in Russian Government propaganda.

Oh I am well aware that many Russians believe that NATO is expansionist and planning to attack them. But that feeling of persecution does not make it true. NATO did not and does not pursue an expansionist posture. The fact that countries in eastern Europe who used to be under the thumb of the USSR continue to feel threatened by the Russian government is not NATO's doing it is the Russian government's. The further fact that the Russian government has been using State controlled media to tell the Russian people that NATO and the west is some how against them is also a big propaganda campaign. Just because someone fears something does not inherently mean it is dangerous. If the Russian government were to act responsibly and fairly in dealings with its neighbours those neighbours would not fear them and there wold be no need to join a defensive alliance like NATO. In fact if we ever get there we would no longer need NATO.

That "agreement" is a perpetuating myth. Gorbachev himself denies there was actually any agreement, yet that doesn't stop it coming up about NATO encroachment. Big brass bells or not. Exactly. This myth has certainly been pointed out as such on these forums before. It might even have been earlier in this thread. The fact that people continue to say them does not make them true. To be clear there never was an agreement about changes to NATO member ship. It just did not happen. The Russian Government say it exists does not make it true.