Ultradave

Fruit was the only good thing in C's Nobody seemed to like apricots and I did so I'd gladly trade them a can of chocolate flavored sawdust (cake) for their apricots. Sweet sugar syrup to keep you going. Cold canned ham and eggs had to be the worst. After I had been there 2 years we got a new DIVARTY CO. He told the 3 battalion mess teams that EVERYONE gets 1 hot meal a day in the field, minimum, or they could be transferred to the battalion ammo trains. Got their attention. Things were much better after that and the field kitchens managed to find us and feed us. Dave

Read this, with emphasis on the parts that have the words "continue to" in them. It's pretty clear: https://ua.usembassy.gov/embassy/kyiv/sections-offices/defense-threat-reduction-office/biological-threat-reduction-program/ And if you think that the US government is posting disinformation somehow, then go find the actual 2005 agreement and read it carefully to see what the real story is. I posted a link to it farther back so I'm not going to repeat it here. And as I said, the NYT article does NOT say what you claim and neither did Ms. Nuland say what you claim. Dave

You mean this? https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/11/us/politics/us-bioweapons-ukraine-misinformation.html?searchResultPosition=1 I suggest you read it very carefully to see who actually said what. Dave

Never had the pleasure. We were still eating C-Rats when I got out. I think some MREs were JUST showing up when I left, but I never saw one. Some C-Rats weren't too bad if you could heat them up. The problem was that many times we were unable to heat them. There were some that there was just no hope for. Self carried Ramen, SPAM, and Frank's Red Hot were necessities on deployments. Probably still are, too! The funniest was labeled "Chicken or Turkey, Boned" (Wait, don't you KNOW?) You'd eat it and the best you could guess was that it was a whitish, tasteless meat. Chicken or turkey? Who knows? Dave

Some improvement in the news from Ukraine's nuclear power plants. Electric power at Chernobyl being fixed and safeguards monitoring back up at the plant that was under attack. https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/pressreleases/update-18-iaea-director-general-statement-on-situation-in-ukraine?fbclid=IwAR0wmKoE_soRLt1KFCvDzsFCFiFDiL9uoo3bk_bu0H6ClHxqDDcrkI-tfOs

nvm Dave

One of my favorite Officer Evaluation Reports I received when I was in the Army stated that "CPT Anderson can always be relied upon to provide his frank and honest opinion" It was meant as a complement, but I could see it being taken two ways (could also be "this guy is trouble"). The Major who wrote it genuinely appreciated that I told gave him honest advice, even (or especially) if it disagreed with his. He liked to hash things out and depended on having a devil's advocate to do that with. But then we(I) come from a culture (meaning Army) culture, that mostly appreciates that. And we would know that if we disagreed with something strongly we'd better damn well have a better alternative to propose. Dave

There are reports, as yet unconfirmed by the IAEA, that off site power has been restored to Chernobyl. Here's the IAEA statement on that. https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/pressreleases/update-17-iaea-director-general-statement-on-situation-in-ukraine Dave

A couple people have asked me about the potential impact of the loss of power at Chernobyl. The below statement from the IAEA should be reassuring, as far as any danger from spent fuel. Recall that loss of all power was what cause the fuel damage at Fukushima. The difference here, not mentioned in the IAEA article, is that the Chernobyl spent fuel has been out for a LONG time, and therefore its decay heat rate is much, much lower than that at Fukushima. The other part of the article mentions loss of signals to safeguards. Reactor safeguards (in the IAEA sense, not the operating the reactor sense) are designed to monitor the fuel cycle to ensure that no nuclear material is diverted from its intended use. I don't see this as a big concern. The fuel is not in a state that is easy to make use of even in a dirty bomb, let alone make use of it for an actual nuclear weapon. For various technical reasons, the Pu in spent fuel from a standard power reactor is unsuitable for the warhead of a weapon. Russia doesn't need it. They have all the nuclear material they need. Ukraine has no interest. IAEA statements can be considered reliable, for their transparent publication of information and analysis. Note that the IAEA is staffed by scientists, engineers and inspectors from many countries and as such, evaluations do not have political agendas. Their overriding concern is nuclear safety and nuclear non-proliferation. Dave https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/pressreleases/update-16-iaea-director-general-statement-on-situation-in-ukraine?fbclid=IwAR1_gMc22fYSiWIfMeM59dXabh5MrKOtZeOXvQnQP2_7o1FqKksC8zfBEsA

Deleted reaction.

This is what that misinformation and propaganda stemmed from. The details of this were twisted to fit their narrative and it didn't start last week. This "story" has been circulating for years, always pushed by Russian and Chinese interests. This effort was sponsored by DTRA - the Defense Threat Reduction Agency. These are the people that work with other countries to PREVENT the spread of WMDs. PREVENT. They were the group that came up with the method of destruction of Syria's chemical weapons. The agreement here is to upgrade lab facilities in Ukraine to better secure them. I'd suggest a thorough reading. Dave https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/05-829-Ukraine-Weapons.pdf

Harsh enough to convince them that the better course is to stop. If they were less, they wouldn't get his attention. Remains to be seen if they will, even as harsh as they are. The end result may be that. Dave

Everyone said war with Russia was inevitable during the Cold War too. I spent 10 years as an Army officer during the 70s-80s. We pretty much expected that we'd never grow old. Yet I just turned 65 and retired. War with Russia never happened, despite numerous proxy wars and some (many?) close calls. This is in no way to minimize Ukraine's plight at the moment, but I think the inevitability and doom predictions are not a new thing. I'm not in any way an expert, (give me a target list and I can blow it up, but grand strategy, international relations is above my pay grade) but I believe the aid being provided coupled with the sanctions Russia is coming under will do the job, without increasing the possibility of US/NATO forces coming into direct conflict with Russian forces. That's the thing that during the Cold War, both sides went to lengths to avoid. Dave

All are using game engine 4.0. Biggest differences would be units, and "content" (numbers of DLC, scenarios, and campaigns included). Take a look at the thread for some good discussion on pros/cons, what's included, what can be done with each title (including the modern ones). Dave

My advice is usually to go with the theater that holds the most interest for you. At this point, all have a lot of content and variety. Dave

After my Army service the rest of my career was in the nuclear engineering field (just recently retired). 3 degrees in nuclear engineering and 34 years experience in reactor plant testing, reactor plant design, radiation protection, and nuclear non-proliferation. In the case of these plants not only have safety features improved, these particular plants are a completely different design than Chernobyl. The Chernobyl "explosion" (it was steam and hydrogen, not a nuclear explosion), was caused by a variety of factors including a rather bizarre design, and operating the plant in a dangerous manner, and then when things went wrong, operators not understanding how the plant would react. EVERY action they took made the situation worse and fed right into the design flaws. A VVER reactor like the ones being fought over is a pressurized water reactor with up to the current standard safety features, and a robust containment building (Chernobyl didn't have a containment, and Russia had ironically justified that as their design and careful operation not needing it). To cause a serious problem you'd have to cut the off-site power to the plant, while also damaging/destroying all the backup diesel generators or their infrastructure that gets the power to the plants. What do they need power for? Cooling. Even a shutdown reactor needs continual cooling, and how much depends on the power history - how long operating at what power level before shutdown. Spent fuel is stored in cooling pools which also require water cooling. These are inside the containment. This is what happened at Fukushima - the Tsunami swamped the diesel generators and knocked out all electrical power to the region, so they got hot. The explosions seen at Fukushima were from hydrogen buildup in the containments. The sparkers that are designed to safely burn it off actually caused the explosions (old design). The containments at Fukushima were very old, dated designs. It appeared from the feed that the fighting was going on around office buildings adjacent to the actual containment. These would be engineering, admin, labs, that are part of the plant. In short, while having a battle on the grounds of a nuke plant is generally a very bad idea, the potential for serious problem is certainly there, but not on the scale of Chernobyl or even Fukushima. Hope that helps. Also, it seems this morning that the Ukrainians withdrew and Russians are controlling. Don't know what that means about operators, but the shooting stopped, thank goodness. Dave

I'd say no, not immediately, since I just yesterday? resubmitted the save game issue with the process monitor printouts. I assume by upcoming you mean soon-ish. Dave

I'm thinking that path being shown should hopefully point them in the right direction. I'll let you know if more is asked. Dave

I opened a new ticket with this detailed info and referred back to the previous one. Looks like the full path to the save game is being appended rather than the relative path from the user's game directory in Documents. Dave

Ok, this may be a clue to look at. Dave

Another question. I see in the pic of the OP that the Game Files folder is inside the installation. On a PC isn't that normally in your User directory? I understand I'm seeing the Steam installation there. Those of you with Matrix or BF installations - is your Game Files folder inside the application folder or in your User directory (somewhere like C:/Users/<username>/Battlefront/CM Black Sea/Game Files/ ) ? I'm wondering if it's some kind of permissions thing that may have changed with patches/updates. Speculating of course. Dave

I did just say there is a ticket for this. And I'm trying to find out more. In the meantime, is there a problem with giving it a slightly modified name or just letting it increment and deleting the old one? I understand the temp file deal but do you get all those temp files if you just let the game name a new save file and then delete the previous one? I know it's annoying but I'm not seeing how it makes the game unplayable or game-breaking. Not to say it shouldn't be fixed, but what exactly is is the issue that is preventing using the game? Are you running out of disk space because of the temp files? Some other issue? Dave

Another question guys. Windows 10 or 11 or both? Thanks. Dave

There is a bug report for this. It's marked as cannot reproduce. Obviously some are having this issue. I'll ask further. Also, this seems to be a PC only issue? I can't reproduce on my Mac with either RT or BS (for obvious reasons I don't have any Steam versions). Dave

Hah. Sure you did. You are the one quoting West Point instructors and US fire support info from presentations. I don't believe I've EVER said anything concerning Soviet fire support procedures, because, guess what - I only know a minimal amount. I DO have the expertise to comment on US and UK/Canadian procedures, and the US is what YOU brought up. You're going on ignore bucko, because all you like to do is argue, change the subject, move the goalposts, and tell me I'm wrong. Have some fun gaming. Dave