Probus

Spot on (pun intended).

**cough**Ogre Mk 0.1**cough**

**cough**Ogre Mk 0.1**cough**

**cough**Ogre Mk 0.1**cough**

Not gamey at all. From what I hear it's quite normal to use mortar teams as riflemen in real life.

You ‘target’ surrendered units a lot ?  I like your style Probus!  Death to your enemizzies!!!

Amen!

https://www.twz.com/air/jdam-er-winged-bombs-with-seekers-that-home-in-on-gps-jammers-headed-to-ukraine
This is encouraging.

https://www.twz.com/air/jdam-er-winged-bombs-with-seekers-that-home-in-on-gps-jammers-headed-to-ukraine
This is encouraging.

Wow!  I'm running on a £1500 4060 laptop.  It's okay 😉.
I agree with what you say.  But even with what we have right now there's nothing better IMO.

Amen!

Glad that the Ukrainians seem to be more in line with Patton’s thinking 
No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making some other poor dumb bastard die for his country.

I guess the next stage depends what the BF company vision is.  Spent a bit of time reading the Steam reviews (good to see BF games on there assuming commercials are favorable for BF these days, recall a thread years ago that they were not in the past). A lot of the Steam reviews predictably complain about the UI and graphical quality. As a CM fan since CM1 my opinion is these players don't appreciate the attention to detail and the finer points of the simulation that you just don't get in many war games, pretty looking point and click WW2 RTS games are just a waste of time IMO.  Its true the CMx2 engine is not great and could do with a replacement or some efficiency tweaks at least(for example I purchased a £6000 4090 rig, all the latest components, 5120x1440 monitor and was stunned to see rendering issues at all even on Balanced settings). But BF is a small development team I recall and if we want to keep seeing the products we know and love then it needs to use its time in a profitable manner first to fund future R&D.  Also , you want a motivated team that enjoy their work when possible. Reading the posts from the admins over the years I believe this is what they do. Its unlikely we will see steam review appeasing projects, more likely it will be doing things they enjoy doing and I am looking forward to the output as always. Scott.

https://www.twz.com/air/jdam-er-winged-bombs-with-seekers-that-home-in-on-gps-jammers-headed-to-ukraine
This is encouraging.

https://www.twz.com/air/jdam-er-winged-bombs-with-seekers-that-home-in-on-gps-jammers-headed-to-ukraine
This is encouraging.

https://www.twz.com/air/jdam-er-winged-bombs-with-seekers-that-home-in-on-gps-jammers-headed-to-ukraine
This is encouraging.

I honestly think they want the same thing we do - Russia needs to lose by just enough.  China wants two things out of Russia - energy and a market.  Both of those are at serious risk if Russia completely falls apart. So they are propping up a partner..just enough. China could have flooded Russia with much higher end capabilities.  Loans, grants and gifts much like we have done in the West for Ukraine. But China does not want a full on proxy war with the US, but also wants a weak but pliable Russia.  To my eyes they are threading a similar needle here.  I also think China is also ticked off at this whole thing as it just made things harder.  We were apathetic and internally obsessed but this war made us look up, maybe only for a bit, but we looked up and out all the same.  So while China was quietly stacking the deck, suddenly the West is all paranoid and freaking out because there was a war that did not involve brown people someplace hot and tan.  We started to care and for a revisionist state that is never a good thing.

Which brings us to the question of what is China really doing?  Are they just trying to make a few bucks while also keeping their old adversary weak?  If they wanted RU to actually win they'd be giving the good stuff like the west is giving.  Are they just trying to play both sides where they support RU enough to save face w Putin but also not so much as to anger the west?  And make a few bucks at the same time?  

Unless you build it far in the west where one can protect it, or in another country.  It is not like the Russians can see and hit every industrial site in Ukraine, if they could then they would have done it.  The best location is in the southwest, in the mountains near the Romanian/Hungarian border - but that is without knowing about Ukrainian infrastructure in that area:

1000ish km and tough to hit if you dig it in.  But it will of course cost.

Now let’s not suddenly forget the real reason why China has risen to power…western greed.  We exported manufacturing and every other hard/increasingly expensive job to China because they would do it for a fraction of what western workers were demanding nor was governed by pesky workplace safety regulations.  We wanted cheap everything from Tshirts to running shoes to cellphones.  We did not admit China into the WTO until 2001 and by then we were over-invested in China for our lifestyles that no one could slow that train down:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_and_the_World_Trade_Organization#:~:text=China became a member of,changes to the Chinese economy.
We had started this trend back in the 80s.  There was nothing altruistic or generous about any of this, it really was simply an extension of western benign (and sometimes not) imperial doctrine.  The Western Rules Based order was really designed to keep the West on top. China figured this out and used that system to rise to power.  They did it using Western money, not charitable intent.  China conducted a series of pretty radical economic reforms and the outsourced the industry we downloaded on them to places like Bangladesh and Vietnam.  They then reinvested in their own high tech and bolstered it with an historic industrial espionage campaign.
None of this was “western misguided liberalism gone wrong” it was straight up pursuit of profit and reinforcing our own consumer based economies.  By the time we realized the problem in the mid ‘00 it was too late.  No politician, even Trump, could simply “drop China”.  Since then we have seen attempts at a gradual uncoupling but we are still too dependent on Asian manufacturing and industry, the pandemic showed this in spades.  And now we are stuck.  We either keep funding Chinese rise to power or try and roll the clock back to 1960, which we can’t do with current standards of living and economic realities.
None of this was generous or high minded.  Anymore than British rule of India was.  It was a 20th century version of economic colonization, which like a lot of colonization came back around to bite.

I fully agree it would take some sort of epic crack up in the Putin regime for Ukraine to get it all back. But if the regimes DOES crack their are simply so many ways it could go all anybody will be able to do is try to surf the avalanche. 

I have no earthy idea what that was supposed to show.  I saw 5-6 gun trucks (at least one tank) make a gangsta style gun run into a town, entirely unsupported mind you.  And 2 came out, likely damaged.  They look like they ran around and shot things up at a vehicle loss of 3-4 and then drove back out.  Not sure what the point of that entire rodeo was but if it was to prove that the garden sheds that the Russian's are bolting on armor are working...well, not sold.

And we are back to "define win."  Can Ukraine retake every inch of terrain back to pre-2014 lines...woohee that is a tall order.  I think they could but we could be talking years of grinding and western support - think Vietnam.
Can they turn back recent Russian tactical gains and re-take some ground - yes.  Can they pull off another RA operational collapse...now that is the big question.  Theoretically, yes.  But since we are not even sure what it takes to do this right now it really is a crap shoot.
Ukraine can definitely freeze this thing and keep bleeding Russia white.  The West has bought itself some runway to get its act together on organizing support.  NATO and the EU really need to step up because at least until this Nov (and possibly beyond) the US may prove to be an unreliable ally.  Worst case is Trump gets in and cuts off US support and guts NATO, because...reasons.  But that is six more  months of RA bleeding.  Ukraine needs to sort out its force generation as well.  Lot moving parts.  It is really a race to see who runs out of what first - a straight up war of Exhaustion.  Unless we get a Hail Mary and the UA can pull off something really dramatic.
So solid, maybe, hopefully...we will see.  

Probably because the targets have dried up too.

As mentioned elsewhere, having never played a battle in any modern title, I accepted a challenge from our good friend @Ultradave to play 'Czechmate' with me as Soviets.  To encourage me (😂) he said this was pretty much what he trained for in RL.  Great way to start, right?
It's a very nice map and I'm starting to enjoy it but having initially lost several vehicles to TOWs from invisible launchers I'm being a bit more cautious and beginning to get spots on some of his units.  Not knowing much about modern weapons is a concern, as is my lack of long range AT assets at the current stage of the game - I have (sorry had) 4 T62s (now 3) but nothing else with range. That will change when the main force arrives.  None if this will come as a surprise to Dave so I'm not giving away much intel.
Overall, I think if I view the exercise as a lesson from the master I will hopefully not be too disappointed when I lose...