BletchleyGeek

Thanks for the analysis Chibot. Offensive operations are difficult. One misstep or failure of synchronisation and that's all what a competent defender needs to throw the attacker off the rails.

The developer that made the game "Hex of Steel" is also working on something that is in line with ER2 . Below is one of the work-in-progress videos from development from the FPS underway. 
He seems like another of the new generation of developers making interesting games with an eye towards keeping everything rooted in a historical basis.
 

I don't think shooting at the direction that has friendly force is pure panic and disorganize.
I guess the UKR side's original plan look like this
 

RUS side main defense position is on the right side of the video. UKR's original plan requires the BMP platoon take the road on the right side and get into the overwatch position along the treeline. Then the company task force on the left side bypass the treeline, no man land, and attacking the Rus position.
It looks like the UKR's company task force arrive at assembly area before the BMP platoon get into the overwatch position. And after receiving the direct fire, the first reaction is that the RUS troops are hiding in the treeline. It is quite logical. 
 
UKR side realized where the real threat is after one minute of engagement, (and that is after the third APC hit) . Their reaction is relatively quick. They quickly maneuver to the right side of the field, avoid further loss. 
 

Really starting to notice that anything that shows UKR in bad light or losing is downvoted to oblivion on the most popular sites. Even if the footage is just from a Russian POV it gets downvoted. /r/UkraineRussiaReport/ is a pretty good counter to this.
https://old.reddit.com/r/UkraineRussiaReport/

As an update, my latest map build:


I (once more) reworked the buildings algorithm and roads/railways/streams. Mostly playing along nicely, although one has to take care not to have a too dense network, because then the algorithm won't be able to find a valid solution.

Now also with fence-like objects...

... and flavour objects.

So basically by now all the necessary functionality is there and working. Some things can be improved but that is more tweaking of cost functions, etc.
I am going to be working on maps for my first Agger Valley campaign, probably consisting of three missions. But afterwards I will go about making the tool available for everyone, I think. 🙂 (Which will involve tyding up, making a tutorial, etc.)

I wrote a little python script to set the elevation in the editor according to a digital elevation model. Those come in various resolutions, for instance, in Germany data for the whole of Northrhine Westfalia is available for free with a 1mx1m granularity. I then use PyAutoGui in order to automate setting the correcting height and clicking/scrolling in the editor. The script currently sets the height information for every square in the editor, not just contours.
An example height map:

The resulting terrain in the editor (3328mx1920m):

Vista somewhere in there.

The script is not terribly fast, making this map took about 7h, but it beats doing all the clicking yourself. The limitation, btw., is the editor, the script could go faster. The advantage is that you can do much better micro-terrain, I think, the disadvantage is that you can't just use an old topographical map and draw the contour lines. It would be possible to do contour lines but you'd need to have those in a machine readable format.
Anyway, if people here are interested, I could polish the code a bit and make it available to everyone, e.g. via github. If there is additional interest, I could imagine doing other stuff that way, like, for instance, drawing roads from Open Street Map.

It will never not make me laugh that the party that's now bitching about money spent in Ukraine...as opposed to Ohio...were the same party that gutted the regulations that would have done much to stop or mitigate the East Palestine disaster. 
And to drag this back on topic...that 5% of the US budget spent on Ukraine to wreck the Russian army is pretty much the bargain of the millennium. Stop having yourselves on.

This really is a “you guys” thing, so I am going to leave out any and all personal opinions one way or the other.  However what I do not get is that the US government is one of the most transparent governments in history.  
So if I am sitting on my back porch and someone in my sphere says “the government is spending all that money on Ukrainians and screwing Ohio-ians, damn [insert political party of your choice]”.  It literally takes an internet connection and about 10 mins to unpack this thing to a level that at least lays out some actual facts:
https://www.policymattersohio.org/research-policy/quality-ohio/revenue-budget/budget-policy/review-of-ohios-2022-23-budget
https://www.lsc.ohio.gov/assets/organizations/legislative-service-commission/files/historical-revenues-and-expenditures-table-1-grf-lpef-and-lgf-revenue-history.pdf
https://www.lsc.ohio.gov/publications/historical-revenues-and-expenditures
https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/federal-aid-by-state
So the punchline is that the US federal government spent about $40B on Ohio alone in 22-23 (12B in grants which are code for “we never except to see them back”) and Ohio is in the top ten states to receive federal funding annually.
Yes, it looks like FEMA is being particularly dense and bureaucratic - and they likely need some executive nudging, however, we are talking about apples and unicorns here in both scale and funding streams.
And finally, there is a lot of some pretty convincing arguments flying around that said dangerous cargo was supposed to be off that train but…politics: https://apnews.com/article/wv-state-wire-north-america-donald-trump-us-news-ap-top-news-2e91c7211b4947de8837ebeda53080b9mp-us-news-ap-top-news-transportation-1936e77a11924c909880f1ef014c7ca7
So what?  Well could the federal government be doing more cut through the red tape and support East Palestine Ohio - looks like it could.
Is the US government blowing all it money on Ukraine and therefore cannot support Ohio-eons?  No, that does not track.
Do US rail safety regulations look like they need a revisit - yes, probably a good idea.
Is there a direct link between East Palestine Ohio and US support to Ukraine - no.  In fact trying to find and indirect link is pretty hard.  The US federal budget was roughly $6.27T in 2022.  The $50B in aid to Ukraine comes to about .8% of that.
So for perspective if an average family income in the US is about 71k per year: https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2022/demo/p60-276.html
So in parallel terms this would be the same as that family spending about $560 dollars, or about $46 per month.
And last point, one of those corrupt former Soviet republics is Russia, a P5 UNSC member and nuclear power, and is directly threatening US global interest and influence, on a great power scale - you wanna stay on top?  You have to fight for it.

 
 

I don't know the details, but I very strongly suspect that 'a small town in Ohio' *could* get aid if certain *cough*qanon*cough* senators and congressmen pulled their heads out of their asses.
It's not a financial binary - Ukraine or Ohio. It's a political binary - Biden doing good makes me look bad.

Actually I don't disagree, but the problem isn't that we are giving money to Ukraine, it is that we don't support our own folks.  We could do both.  Why we don't take care of our own people is a domestic issue and really has nothing to do with Ukraine.  Frustrating?  Yes
As someone who's COBRA benefits are about to run out and I am now researching the medical care marketplace I have a strong opinion about how we take care of our own and who has effed that up, but that is for an offline discussion.

For the non-Mil here (such as myself), these observations from a relative in the British Army:
The fella fighting was going through a mag every couple of seconds. They all need to be reloaded. The grens are shipped in two parts,  fuse and body and they have to be married almost immediately beforehand. The RPG warhead has to be fused, and married to the motor. The frightened bloke did well to keep at it. He came out to fire at one point, but fighting bloke told [him] to get back in.
There is enough work in that intensity to take half a section* out just maintaining the fire. In a platoon the Reserve is constantly rebombing the mags and sending them forward. That pit was held because of the sheer amount of suppressing fire that bloke laid down, and it was only possible with the support from the frightened guy.
[The Shooter] has been in that position for weeks, but I’m surprised he didn’t have a firing ledge cut into to get better visibility.
You’d wonder at the BMP crew. They just ate a RPG, and second one, and didn’t return fire into the position. Might have been too close to depress their cannon.
Yeah, milchat is laughing at ‘most engagements are at up to 300m’ yeah chew on 30m.... 
So the comments I've seen (not here) mocking the second guy are just sheer, stupid amateur ignorance. In a fight everyone plays a part and not everyone is a hero every time. Artillery explosion overpressure waves and constant combat (and the threat of combat) do awful things to the human brain.  The bravest man can be steadily reduced to a nervous cat with enough concussive impacts.
The "scared"  guy could just as easily be the hero next time.  Or not,  but who knows - unless you're in the fox hole and you're him or his shooter buddy. No one else knows. Any commentary beyond that is just talking uninformed ****e. 
 
*In the BA a Platoon is made of Sections. In the US they're called squads or teams (I believe? ). 

Just one soldier, doing the job of an entire squad... no wonder the Ukrainians are winning most of these engagements.
Fascinating video, thanks for posting it @akd... you can feel the fear and panic, you don't need to understand the language, but that man carries on. True bravery in action.

Oh and just to put the bow on this whole thing:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-64644845
We had a lotta laughs though - cue montage.

I forgot weekend starts early when it's 7+ hours later 😉 Sure reads more pleasant than about the nukes but not sure if Kraze can get warmed up listening to Bulgakov while getting a Russian massage. Nothing impossible though.🤣
Salut!

The foundation of reactionary politics in US is that many ordinary people live in relative luxury but imagine it is penury and that their kids won’t do as well as they did (Trump support was overwhelmingly from folks making above $50k/year). Their antipathy to immigrants is that they worry they might actually do this whole America thing better.
Ukraine’s reactionary politics is being crushed by this war. The oligarchs simply can’t compete in a society where corruption is a barrier to throwing out the hated Russian bear. And regular people are learning they can fight a war, use social contacts to supply an army, self fund tank destroyer units. It’s civic empowerment in the most accelerated way. You can see in things like that video from a few months ago where a police checkpoint was shaking down drivers. The local TD unit found out and came and arrested them all. 
One can see this sort of attitude in Vietnam. For all of that nation’s problems, people have a sense of identity and a confidence that is pretty amazing. It makes them much more powerful than their mere numbers suggest.
 

Also extraordinarily helpful and eloquent 'facts on the ground':
1.  Black Horse HQ redeploys to IVO Izium, with cantonments and training grounds sharing defence responsibility with fully 'Westernised' UA mech forces deployed in the central Karkhiv-Izium-east Luhansk oblast 'bulge' of Ukraine.  Think CENTAG -- UA [Bundeswehr] fully integrated with US commands. Fulda Gap. Whatever 'heavy' means, it is deployed at full scale right heah! Go ahead, make our day....
2. Polish-Czech heavy armoured division IVO Dnipro and Poltava (which btw is also a forward TAC base and EW command centre). Attach heavily subsidised Romanian pioneer brigade (come on, you DID get your frontier restored to the Dnistr postwar in 2025, by popular referendum. Do your bit!)
....Here, my pathetic little US satrapy 🇨🇦 can even contract some cranky old EOD sea lawyers to manage private contractors (I could accurately name the nations providing the actual sappers, but it would be distinctly nonwoke) clearing about ten bazillion mines/UXO in Donbas... that is actually the most dangerous postwar work, no joke.
3.  101 AB RCT in Kyiv backstops UA forces on the frontier from Chernaiv to Kyiv. TBH, the UA has nothing really to learn about  combat from the 101st, but it's always nice to professionalise and integrate the 'tail'.
4. Ideally, Anglo-US HQ advisory and training elements -- perhaps Étrangère as well? --  are based around Gomel, in a newly democratic but utterly Anything Goes Belarus. 
Minsk becomes the weirdest, edgiest and most violent city in Europe, the sole entrepot of the post-Soviet Mafiyas.  Tombstone 1889, or Shanghai 1924....
Я твой Гекльберри.
...Notice that 'NATO' plays no formal role in any of this for 10+ years.
****
So now we wander off the map of military into Emerging Markets possibility space.
1. By about 2032, Ukraine, Europe's GMP compliant manufacturing hub, has already reached middle income status on a national average per capita GDP basis.
2. Fantastic yakitori, chaat and vegan Texmex, plus gourmet coffee, is standard fare in youthful hi-tech edge cities exploding in quaint Old Town / university areas of all Ukraine's major cities.
3. Ukrainian biopharma / biotech eats China's (and India's) lunch with amazing speed, moving to the world's R&D leading edge (daily nonstop flights Odessa-Tel Aviv). 
4. With avid lobbying from the private sector (fine, just say George Soros if you're into that kind of thing, but it's pretty ecumenical in reality), Ukraine achieves EU membership by 2028, well before NATO becomes feasible.
5.  @kraze , realising that Living Well Is the Best Revenge, claims 'reparations' from ambiguously legal Muscovite massage therapists, one lap dance at a time.
In addition to his tireless custom but stingy tipping, he also gains some notoriety in the trade by insisting the 'visiting artists' recite verses from Pushkin and Bulgakov on the karaoke machine whilst Performing, with the bass reverb cranked up to Eleven....
Ни мамы, ни папы, ни газировки с виски. Нет русской возлюбленной!
6.  Coincidentally, rumour spreads that certain videos are embedded as easter eggs in CMBS2 scenarios. Shall we say, ahem, 'Enemy Condition' finally becomes meaningful in achieving Total Victory.  Whose grass mod are you using, winkwinknudgenudge?
7.  CM product sales soar faster than a  Stalinist pig iron quota, particularly for the Professional Edition. Steve retires to Stalin's former palace at Yalta (several degrees warmer than Vermont) and makes bank as a docent, with the grudging assent of his wife, while obdurately refusing to fix the PzKwIII turret rotation bug, or sumfink.
6. Meanwhile, across the bristling 2023 frontier, maquiladoras flourish, first in Crimea and Kuban, then in Belgorod and Voronezh... and, wait for it, Chechnya (where Kadyrov  has finally achieved martyrdom after enjoying too much lamb with apricots at the halal buffet).
Bored, totally unfunded Russian generals are only too happy to put their mobiks/zeks/ fanatical brainwashed Third Rome Zoomers to profitable (for the generals) work in sweatshops, picking and packing pills and chips, since 'hohols' can no longer can be found to do those jobs across the (densely fortified and mined but increasingly porous) frontier.
....So yeah, about that combat Readiness for that Next War, against peoples who are presently funding your commanders' beach houses in Cyprus.
8.  Sadly, the shattered and depopulated Donbas will take at least 12 years and billions in reconstruction aid and subsidies to start showing signs of economic life again. 'Clean energy' on the steppes is probably the thin edge of the wedge.
(copains, please don't take this too literally, it's presented more as a counterpoint to the last 20 pages or so.  But such trajectories did /are happening in Asia, in spite of dysfunctional rulers and seemingly shattered infra and social contracts. Take a look at today's Cambodia, which quite literally devoured about a third of itself nearly half a century ago!)

Don't forget you are using google translate. He didn't call you a beggar, he used a saying (прислів'я). 
And yes people here understand that Ukrainians are now in a difficult place. But we can't fully imagine it because we aren't experiencing it. At the same time we also still have our lives with the normal problems, small compared to Ukraine but that doesn't make them smaller for us.
Anyway in my opinion there is too much politics and stirup by media (крамола) going around. If three months ago it would be known that Germany would allow all tank transfer to Ukraine and deliver 14 Leo2A6 end of March, it would be good news. 
From my point of view the support is not 'mockery'. Inflation 20% is not mockery, gas price going through roof is not mockery. One of my friend company was on point of bankruptcy because of the gas price. Compared to Ukraine it is small problem. But not for him, he has everything in it and depend on it to eat with wife and two children. At that time he think same about Ukraine as your last 3 words.

Back to support, Germany is setting up a factory for production of Gepard ammunition. A vehicle they don't have in service anymore. Is it *all* you need? No, but it is something. 
Of course if you are under daily attacks, nothing can come fast enough. And yes if there would be rocket falling here also, things would go faster probably. But they aren't falling here. 
 

I don't play Wordle, but I suppose the 3rd letter could be either "I" or "O".
P.S. Our Thread.....
[OK, looks like things got back on track on p2073.]

A Front Too Far seems beeing an earlier (or first) game from that developer. Stalingrad is Easy Red 2´s first and thus far, only DLC. I purchased both at 12 Euro and it can only be more inexpensive when going for...erm..warez. But of course we don´t go for anything like that, do we? 🧐😅

Luke Harding at The Guardian had an interesting piece touching how cultural legacy is perceived in times of existential war
https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2022/dec/31/mikhail-bulgakov-museum-kyiv-calls-to-close
 
 

Luke Harding at The Guardian had an interesting piece touching how cultural legacy is perceived in times of existential war
https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2022/dec/31/mikhail-bulgakov-museum-kyiv-calls-to-close
 
 

Thanks Miguel I’ll do that.
Also, feel free to pass this along if you guys think someone might be a good fit. 

Good luck with the search @Bil Hardenberger I suggest you make a posting on this list as well:
SimulatingWar@groups.io
 

We are looking for a wargame developer at Quantico Virginia. If you have US citizenship (or a green card), a Secret clearance, and are in any way interested, please read the below, and PM me with any questions. 
Bil
Link to job posting Job Description
At BAE Systems, we promote a strong, collaborative culture and provide our employees with the tools and skills they need to succeed. We are all about trust, camaraderie and a shared ambition to lead the world in defense technologies and national security services. We offer flexible work environment to support the balance in your life and keep you performing at your best. Be a part of a company that is part of the community, driven to improve our future, protect our freedom – and what matters.

We are seeking a Wargame Developer in support of a government contract for wargaming. 
Position located in Quantico, VA.
Responsibilities include:
Conducting research and developing wargame scenario products, including orders of battle, Intelligence Preparation of the Battlespace, and system capabilities Assisting Game Designers by developing, adapting, and refining wargame mechanics and rules Developing and producing wargame components, including physical maps, unit tokens, and references materials Developing, operating, maintaining, and archiving simulations databases in support of wargames and events, with government-provided Model & Simulation tools Troubleshooting issues with input, retrieval, or modification of simulations databases Test M&S, terrain data, and scripts Operate M&S tools during wargame execution Develop a Program of Instruction for M&S tools Using the developed Program of Instruction, provide operator training and over the shoulder training to government players Provide data for government and other contractor analysts
Required Education, Experience, & Skills •Qualified candidates must have a current and active Secret clearance, with the ability to obtain a TS/SCI
•BA/BS in related field
•Must have experience with Model & Simulation tools
•Must have more than 12 years of related work experience
•Ability to work in collaborative team/staff environments
•Strong interpersonal skills.
•Knowledge of military affairs and/or foreign policy.
•MS Office, especially ability to build professional PowerPoint presentations
Preferred Education, Experience, & Skills
•Experience in wargaming
•Experience in Department of Defense M&S
•Background and understanding of military operations and future concepts, especially for the Marine Corps.

About BAE Systems Intelligence & Security
BAE Systems Intelligence & Security, based in McLean, Virginia, designs and delivers advanced defense, intelligence, and security solutions that support the important missions of our customers. Our pride and dedication shows in everything we do—from intelligence analysis, cyber operations and IT expertise to systems development, systems integration, and operations and maintenance services. Knowing that our work enables the U.S. military and government to recognize, manage and defeat threats inspires us to push ourselves and our technologies to new levels. That’s BAE Systems. That’s Inspired Work. Equal Opportunity Employer/Females/Minorities/Veterans/Disabled/Sexual Orientation/Gender Identity/Gender Expression. To see Inspired Work in action, visit www.baesystems.com and follow us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/baesystemsintel.

Homicide is the act of killing a man
Regicide is the act of killing a king
Fratricide is the act of killing a brother (or, more generally, any blue-on-blue)
Matricide is the act of killing your mother
Countryside is the act of killing Piers Morgan