hm_stanley

how is this any different from every other war the Russians, err.. Soviets have fought?  none.  This is the Russian way of war and has been for centuries.

how is this any different from every other war the Russians, err.. Soviets have fought?  none.  This is the Russian way of war and has been for centuries.

These maps are beautiful... thanks for doing this.

the entire AAR of this war is going to be a field day for military historians for decades..  I'm just hoping I survive it (to study it) and not wake one morning to see a bright flash over the bay bridge..

And you haven't even talked about the ability of the said attacker (Russa) to be able to do this (mechanics wise).  
They have lost precious access to western technical goods that make up those "replacements" and the Russian Federation has nothing analogous to western military reservists to pull fast replacement infantry.  They are literally in a hole they cannot dig themselves out of.
If what I've read about the CNC of the Russian Military is true, the organization is so vertical it requires you to tilt your head sideways to read their command structure.  This new guy, Aleksandr Dvornikov, has seen combat in a theater where he had total air dominance, ample supply and the cream of the crop unit wise - why would he approach this mess any different?  He won't, he will blunder his way through, inheriting a disorganized, misinformed and disinterested military that seems hell bent on killing itself.

It runs great on a Mac M1 Pro.  Graphics are all maxed and everything runs great. Turns are fast, some weird UI stuff, but nothing that affects the gameplay.  It actually is more enjoyable on the M1 than on an x86 Mac.

No theater commander replacements culled from destroyed BTGs no combined arms  no air force overall morale in the toilet fighting a determined and entrenched enemy with very modern infantry arms multiple maneuver thrusts with no political or strategic goals (outlined covertly or broadcast publically) not enough men and materials to wage this uncoordinated mess substandard equipment and supply rasputitsa rear is threatened and in constant friction captured locations are exceptionally dangerous for the average Rosgvardiya potential 10k KIA/20k WIA (unconfirmed) Fundamentally, they are being outfought, outspent (yes) and outwitted on the battlefield.  What bothers me is that, add of these things up (they know this in the Kremlin too) and you get a situation where decisions get compartmentalized and validated by a very select few.  Those few might feel sovereignty and survival are at stake and move to insure some strategic or tactical goal is met, which might include the destruction and annihilation of a Kiev or Kharkov via chemical or nuclear weapons.  We are not too far from that decision I fear.  I'm not fear mongering, I'm just showcasing the decision tree that Putin is facing, he has to know this and he has to understand where he stands right now relative to his strength and goals.  I have to assume that much.

No theater commander replacements culled from destroyed BTGs no combined arms  no air force overall morale in the toilet fighting a determined and entrenched enemy with very modern infantry arms multiple maneuver thrusts with no political or strategic goals (outlined covertly or broadcast publically) not enough men and materials to wage this uncoordinated mess substandard equipment and supply rasputitsa rear is threatened and in constant friction captured locations are exceptionally dangerous for the average Rosgvardiya potential 10k KIA/20k WIA (unconfirmed) Fundamentally, they are being outfought, outspent (yes) and outwitted on the battlefield.  What bothers me is that, add of these things up (they know this in the Kremlin too) and you get a situation where decisions get compartmentalized and validated by a very select few.  Those few might feel sovereignty and survival are at stake and move to insure some strategic or tactical goal is met, which might include the destruction and annihilation of a Kiev or Kharkov via chemical or nuclear weapons.  We are not too far from that decision I fear.  I'm not fear mongering, I'm just showcasing the decision tree that Putin is facing, he has to know this and he has to understand where he stands right now relative to his strength and goals.  I have to assume that much.

They're a terror weapon, simply put.
Best tactically effective against unprepared/unwitting targets. Even in WW1, with so many gas attacks, the infantry on both sides quickly learned how to deal with it, with the thicker gasses being more useful for restricting defenders LOS.
But with this ****er, anything is on the table - mass chemical attack on Kharkhiv, causing utter civilian chaos, then ground attack. Weaponize the fear to clog roads and maneuverability. 
But even then, UA forces would just fight harder. And I'm pretty sure it would be a theatre wide no-prisoners policy.

Note to self, these posts are from the same guy who wrote on "how hot will ukraine get" that Covid and bio weapons labs in Ukraine are at the heart of the invasion premise for Putin.. 
I find these posts rather jarring and incongruent (and incoherent) with a person who claims their sources are "of highest quality" when the actual post includes clear delusional far right propaganda from some charlatan who want to take your $$ for their "high quality and sourced" intelligence, when it's complete word salad and garbage fear mongering disinformation.

I really thought the interviewer didn't really do his homework before this interview.. there were a ton of hairbrained questions, like "do you think BFC will update CMBB or CMAK in the future?".. no, why would he ever do this? those engines are a technical dead-end, fun to play in 2001, not fun to play in 2022.  Anyway, I thought Steve was being nice and I'm not sure I would have reacted the same way.

I really thought the interviewer didn't really do his homework before this interview.. there were a ton of hairbrained questions, like "do you think BFC will update CMBB or CMAK in the future?".. no, why would he ever do this? those engines are a technical dead-end, fun to play in 2001, not fun to play in 2022.  Anyway, I thought Steve was being nice and I'm not sure I would have reacted the same way.

I really thought the interviewer didn't really do his homework before this interview.. there were a ton of hairbrained questions, like "do you think BFC will update CMBB or CMAK in the future?".. no, why would he ever do this? those engines are a technical dead-end, fun to play in 2001, not fun to play in 2022.  Anyway, I thought Steve was being nice and I'm not sure I would have reacted the same way.

I really thought the interviewer didn't really do his homework before this interview.. there were a ton of hairbrained questions, like "do you think BFC will update CMBB or CMAK in the future?".. no, why would he ever do this? those engines are a technical dead-end, fun to play in 2001, not fun to play in 2022.  Anyway, I thought Steve was being nice and I'm not sure I would have reacted the same way.

It's working great for me Ian, as said, no issues running this build and I've had it up for two days straight.
 

Thanks everyone.. glad i'm not alone here and the game works really nicely tho in game mode.

Thanks everyone.. glad i'm not alone here and the game works really nicely tho in game mode.

Please point me to the manual location where it says that??

It's pretty clear in the manual, "elite adds a level of difficulty to the game where units are represented as soldier icons...."

There is nothing there that even implies that, oh and by the way," it's completely circumvented by clicking on those generic icons and finding out exactly what that unit really is, we just wanted to provide a few more meaningless clicks to your game experience. "

Please give me a break. I'm sure steve would agree that it's broken and it's NOT behaving the way he intended it to. Therefore it's a BUG!!

So, why waste the time, play warrior level and then I don't need to click twenty more times in a game, that's a better experience.

We can argue all day on intended functionality vs expected behavior. To me, it's a bug. Either they didn't have time to implement it correctly or they implemented it and then decided that the way it was supposed to work wasn't exactly how they wanted it to work, yada yada.

Bottom line, if I were testing on this project it would be filed as a bug, marked to be fixed, priority 3, since it's not crashing anything and it's half working as desired.

To me this is a complete bug. I realized this in a PBEM after I couldn't understand why my opponet was targeting my hq units?? I was saying, how does he know that is an hq unit, well I picked one of his icons and it told me what the unit was, a machine gunner in this case.

I said, wait??? That's total fail, what's the point if elite if I know the unit by clicking on it??

Anyway, please FIX this bug. Very annoying.

Does the engine seems cleaner? faster? That said, the units SEEM to not do as many DUMB things (path'ing).. sadly tho, we still get one-shot wonder "Heinz" with his 88mm Pak 41/43 penetrating an IS-2 at 4k M, but I digress..
 
I was trying to explain how hard it can be to modify an existing game engine and move it up to higher and higher fidelities today with another friend of mine in software development.  It's not easy, and I think we see this quite clearly with CMRT vs. CMBN. Not to say that CMBN isn't fun, it's just that when I play CMRT I have a much better experience with larger maps, cleaner color palette, etc. (I know you can make large maps in CMBN, but the speed and fidelity aren't there IMO).
 
I wonder what other people think?  I mean, I am a Ost Front fan boy, but still, I enjoy the challenge of Normandy and the different TO&E in that game (as well as it's lost cousin CMFI), but i'm left wondering if the game experience isn't as good as when I play H2H on CMRT.. which I love to do and it seems to have a far better outcome game wise..
 
Do others agree? I mean, how hard is it to add tank riders to CMBN? I would think NOT hard, but clearly hard enough that it wasn't added.. and it wasn't because of military doctrine..it was because the bits and bytes don't play nice together I'm sure.. I mean, add it in in CMRT and not in CMBN? 
 
Not trolling.. rather curious if others think the game experience in CMRT is better than the other titles in the CMx2 engine?

Wait.. there are a ton of source material for Bagration.. I mean, some of it obscure, but many not.  For example, here are some books on the subject: (I got some of these from Wikipedia, but I've read some of them too)
Beevor, Antony; Vinogradova,, Luba, eds. (2006). A Writer at War: Vasily Grossman with the Red Army. (great book) - READ Glantz, David M.; House, Jonathan (1995). When Titans Clashed: How the Red Army Stopped Hitler (another good book - READ) Glantz, David M. (2002). The Battle for L'vov, July 1944 - READ Buchner, Alex (1991). Ostfront 1944: The German Defensive Battles on the Russian Front 1944 - Not read. Bagration 1944: The Destruction Of Army Group Centre (Campaign)  (Osprey book, excellent) Anyway.. even the web has tons of materials on the battles:
 
Here is a US Army Study on Bagration:
http://usacac.army.mil/cac2/cgsc/carl/download/csipubs/connor.pdf http://ww2days.com/bagration-operation.html Anyway.. I'm sure in some of these materials, small tactical battles can be surmised and developed.  That said, Bagration from a tactical point of view is perfect for a CM game, the materials, units and other TO&E are "of the good stuff" on both sides.. Anyway.. I can't wait for the drive on Berlin and the Op Spring Awakening and Seelow Heights.. I could go on and on.. Love it far more than the Western Front, but I've always been an Ost Front guy.

Does the engine seems cleaner? faster? That said, the units SEEM to not do as many DUMB things (path'ing).. sadly tho, we still get one-shot wonder "Heinz" with his 88mm Pak 41/43 penetrating an IS-2 at 4k M, but I digress..
 
I was trying to explain how hard it can be to modify an existing game engine and move it up to higher and higher fidelities today with another friend of mine in software development.  It's not easy, and I think we see this quite clearly with CMRT vs. CMBN. Not to say that CMBN isn't fun, it's just that when I play CMRT I have a much better experience with larger maps, cleaner color palette, etc. (I know you can make large maps in CMBN, but the speed and fidelity aren't there IMO).
 
I wonder what other people think?  I mean, I am a Ost Front fan boy, but still, I enjoy the challenge of Normandy and the different TO&E in that game (as well as it's lost cousin CMFI), but i'm left wondering if the game experience isn't as good as when I play H2H on CMRT.. which I love to do and it seems to have a far better outcome game wise..
 
Do others agree? I mean, how hard is it to add tank riders to CMBN? I would think NOT hard, but clearly hard enough that it wasn't added.. and it wasn't because of military doctrine..it was because the bits and bytes don't play nice together I'm sure.. I mean, add it in in CMRT and not in CMBN? 
 
Not trolling.. rather curious if others think the game experience in CMRT is better than the other titles in the CMx2 engine?

Does the engine seems cleaner? faster? That said, the units SEEM to not do as many DUMB things (path'ing).. sadly tho, we still get one-shot wonder "Heinz" with his 88mm Pak 41/43 penetrating an IS-2 at 4k M, but I digress..
 
I was trying to explain how hard it can be to modify an existing game engine and move it up to higher and higher fidelities today with another friend of mine in software development.  It's not easy, and I think we see this quite clearly with CMRT vs. CMBN. Not to say that CMBN isn't fun, it's just that when I play CMRT I have a much better experience with larger maps, cleaner color palette, etc. (I know you can make large maps in CMBN, but the speed and fidelity aren't there IMO).
 
I wonder what other people think?  I mean, I am a Ost Front fan boy, but still, I enjoy the challenge of Normandy and the different TO&E in that game (as well as it's lost cousin CMFI), but i'm left wondering if the game experience isn't as good as when I play H2H on CMRT.. which I love to do and it seems to have a far better outcome game wise..
 
Do others agree? I mean, how hard is it to add tank riders to CMBN? I would think NOT hard, but clearly hard enough that it wasn't added.. and it wasn't because of military doctrine..it was because the bits and bytes don't play nice together I'm sure.. I mean, add it in in CMRT and not in CMBN? 
 
Not trolling.. rather curious if others think the game experience in CMRT is better than the other titles in the CMx2 engine?