Ultradave

I just logged in with no problems. Not sure what's wrong then. Maybe try (if you haven't) logging in to Slitherene with that username and password , just to make sure it actually still works there? I can't think of anything else. Dave

Right. I think you only need the "Register" button if you DON'T already have a Slithering login. If you do, just put in your info and click OK.

Yes, there are usually one, two or three of the crew just out of the picture about 20-30 feet behind the piece doing that work. They end up out of the field of view of the pictures of the rest of the crew loading and firing rounds. Also usually out of the pictures would be a stack of rounds in wooden crates, crates of fuzes to mate to them, and a pit or pile for the unused powder bags, and men from the battalion ammo train occasionally dropping off more rounds. The difference for SP artillery is that the ammo carrier vehicle would be backed up fairly close to the SP howitzer and they'd work in between them. For towed artillery the prime mover also carries the ammo for that howitzer. I'm speaking of US artillery. I know Canadians are much the same, having done an exchange tour with them, so I assume the UK is also very similar. Don't have experience with others. Dave

It occurred to me I didn't explain the powder bags well. An 81mm shell has powder bags attached between the fins and the bulging part of the round. Depending on the range to the target, some of the bags will be not needed. They are taken off and collected for disposal (burning). Similar to an artillery round having powder bags. A 4.2"/107mm mortar round has something similar, but in this case they are plastic-ish "disks" attached to the bottom of the round. I don't know if everyone knows that mortar rounds have variable powder charges just like artillery. 105mm artillery rounds are semi cased ammo, and the powder bags are in the shell casing - take off the extra, put in them in the pit (they are strung together in a chain). 155mm ammo is separate loading, with the shell going in and then a stack of powder bags. In this case there is no casing, the bags are in a stack, tied up. Remove the extras, retie the stack, shove it in. It takes a short time to do this and if there is time and personnel, the crew will pre-make rounds. You don't want to do too many though, in case you have to move and need a larger charge in the new position. Dave

Not sure from what you've posted what the issue is so I'll try just some of the basics In OPTIONS on the main menu, when you get to the OPTIONS screen, at the bottom there is a new button for PBEM login. Click on that and there you can enter a login id and password and your email. The login id and password is your Slitherene one. If you don't have one, just go there and register. Now you are all ready to set up a challenge for someone to pick up. Back to the main menu, select BATTLE, pick the scenario, then the side, and then where you would normally select Real Time, Turn based, PBEM, you want "Automated PBEM. You can password protect it so that only someone with the password can accept. This is common when you have already agreed to play someone and don't want someone else randomly to come in and take it. You'll then set your in game password, and it will automatically save and exit you back to the main menu. Later after your opponent does his first turn, you should get an email that it is now your turn. Open the game, select SAVED GAMES, and at the bottom of the screen, the thing you want to select is PBEM++ in progress. There you can select the next turn to open up. when you click the red button to process the turn it will save and exit. Continue for each turn. I hope that helps. I think I got the whole sequence right. If you have a problem, PM me and I"ll try to help or if you want to set up a test scenario with me to try the process, go ahead and PM me a password and your Slitherene ID and the scenario so I know which one to grab. Dave

It's not the precision munitions or lack of. It's the trajectory of the rounds in the air, vs. the flight path of the aircraft coming in on an air strike. Pilots are not amused when told "Big sky, little bullet" Dave

We had to check fire for any air strikes. Also: Those times sound not much different from 30 years before, and 30 years before, the methods of calling and calculating fire were not very much different than Korean War or WW2. So pretty standard. Dave

Yes. Cold War era, we practiced hip shoots incessantly, because counter battery radar was getting so good that the estimate was 6 individual rounds or 6 battery volleys and a position was assumed to be located. So we operated by being on the move, receiving a call for fire, finding a spot quickly to set up, fire the mission, pack up and move again. In this situation the battery commander is never with the battery. He and the 1SG and a couple others are the advance team scouting the next possible position. The XO, FDO and Chief of Firing Battery (usually an E7) run the battery and move it. Hipshoots were a little harder for our towed 105mm battery compared to 155mm SP artillery. They can emplace quickly. We had to pound in at least the 2 long stakes in the baseplate to be able to fire. (picture "I've been working on the railroad" ) Takes a few minutes. This is for on-call fires. A preparatory fire for an attack would have to be more set in place firing. Even then, it could be with batteries alternating moving and firing so there is always fire on the TRPs

Take an 81mm mortar. Slinging rounds down range still involves figuring the range, even if roughly, from that determining the charge to fire, stripping off the excess powder bags, setting the declination and elevation and then firing the adjusting round. Time of flight for a mortar round can be 45 seconds, depending on range. All of those things in themselves don’t take that long but all those little actions add up Dave

I play tested the '79 campaign and I do remember some issues with this one and the last one (is that Citadel), but once the setup zone was gone, things worked well enough. But I'm on a Mac, without a GPU (just integrated graphics) so I don't have any GPU hints for you. But @The_Capt is right. I went with the defaults setup to see how things played out that way and did quite well the first time through. I think the only things I changed were some vehicles near some long low buildings near the bottom of the slag pile. But I really waited until turn 1 to move much of anything. Citadel (if that's the name of the last one) the setup zone is monstrous and I pretty much gave up trying to reposition anything. The good news for both of those is that the default setup is pretty good and you won't be far wrong going with it. The enemy starts a long way off so you have time to react. Dave

They do. But two things about this. 1) I wasn't talking about numbers of tanks, and 2) there are always times when a local superiority might be obtained, even if it's for a short time (like a scenario length) before the hoards reinforce Dave

This is a key point to remember. The US armor of the time is NOTHING like having a bunch of up to date M1s that can shrug off most hits and take on almost anything regardless of odds. Be prepared to lose M60s. Sometimes quite a number of them. It's a little bit like having M4 Shermans in WW2 and the Germans are all Panthers. If you keep that mindset and are careful how you use them, more will survive (not a perfect analogy but it sounds like most of your experience is WW2 titles). During beta, I playtested the US '79 campaign, and while you have older equipment, there are still scenarios where you have advantages. So the campaign as a whole, while challenging, is not overwhelming. I haven't tried the '82 US campaign yet myself. Pretty sure the same balance is there, but the forces on both sides are different. I DO know from discussions that one scenario in particular, was much easier in 79 than in 82. (no spoilers, you'll have to try it ) Others were harder/easier the other way. For individual scenarios, try some of the smaller ones first, so you can more easily manage what your troops are doing, to get a handle on vehicle strengths and weaknesses. Hope that helps and have fun! Dave

LOL. When we were getting ready to move there, a British friend of ours who lives in Boston, on finding out where we were moving to, said, "Oooh, it's pretty grim up there in the winter. Actually it's pretty grim there all the time. Well, all of England is pretty grim in the winter. " Of course, by New England standards, it was just fine. A little rainier than we were used to but as we were told, "there's no such thing as bad weather, just inappropriate clothing." BBC Cumbria radio one morning, the weather guy gave the forecast for the day as I was driving to work, "Light overnight rain ending about dawn, winds will pick up, rain returning about 9am, winds will pick up from the west (off the Irish Sea), winds of 30-40mph, with occasional gusts up to 50mph. But it will be warm, so all in all not too bad a day." He was Scottish Dave

I think that last is something that we were somewhat insulated from, living where we did. We had a real strong sense of local community. Mostly small towns. Lots of farms. In general people were friendly and outgoing. The national park right there so lots of respect and love for the outdoors. Just a great place to live. I'd enjoy living in that same area again. We were pretty far north, about halfway between Lancaster and Carlisle (the two closest cities - small cities), 2 hours north of Manchester, the closest large city. Dave

My wife once commented to one of our neighbors that all of the banks seemed completely incompetent, while the Post Office can do just about anything (including simple banking and insurance) and do it well. "Aye, pretty much," was the answer. Non-UK experienced people need to know that the Post Office is separate from Royal Mail. We banked at Barclays. They were dumbfounded by me wanting to wire transfer money to my US bank (USAA, which is well used to its members being overseas). I brought them all the info and numbers they needed and they couldn't fill out their own form. At the time, the second biggest bank IN THE WORLD, and they were completely stumped by a wire transfer. We were sending money to our US account to stay under the $10K reporting requirement for foreign accounts. I basically had to show them how to fill out every block on their computer screen. They still charged me the transfer fee Typical experience. They also would not give my wife a debit card with a chip. Their reasoning was that "then she could spend money without you knowing" Seriously? What is this, 1952? Give her a card. (many places it's required to have the chip and pin, for security, so without it her card would have been pretty useless). That being said, we loved living there. We were in the northwest, just on the south edge of the Lakes District National Park, a huge expanse of mountains, lakes and quaint villages. Gorgeous country, plus we were right on the coast too, as a bonus. Mostly small towns, farms, and moors for roaming. The people were universally nice and welcomed us like family. Dave

I lived in England for some years for work. Paid taxes, enrolled in the NHS. It all works out. If you weren't paying the VAT, then income taxes would be higher. Expenses have to be paid one way or the other. I was talking to my brother once about taxes. Living in Rhode Island and working in Connecticut I had to fill out 2 state income tax forms, prorated against each other for income earned in each state. He, being in Texas, gloated that he had no income tax at all. Of course, comparing notes, his property taxes on a smaller house than mine were higher than my COMBINED property taxes plus state income taxes. And I live in *supposedly* high tax Rhode Island. Towns, states, countries have to be run and the money has to come from the same places, just by different means Dave

The updates should all come out at roughly the same time. Might be a day or two difference, but really it's more a case of whether you like to use Steam and enjoy the automatic updates, than who gets it first. Dave

You may indeed.

Yes, I know how direct fire works. Direct fire you wouldn't need an FDC even with howitzers. I was talking about indirect fire. The discussion before was about why it still takes some time to calculate firing data for indirect fire. Dave

Just don't confuse not having a physical FDC with not having to do the calculations for charge, deflection, elevation. Dave

By time compression what I had in mind was more along the lines of being given a shorter time to accomplish tasks than might be the case in real life. Of course, one can always rationalize that by orders from on high that x,y,z must be accomplished because either something else has to happen on time, or the enemy would make use of massive reinforcements after that time limit. Works fine for me. Dave

Sure, but the typical CM scenario is 1 hour. It's the minority that are longer.

The VA needs more funding, more facilities, more doctors. I worked on the dialysis ward. Some patients were there because of wounds, some because of disease. One young strapping Marine had a reaction to an antibiotic that shut down his kidneys, probably permanently. The card they received was great. A couple of the techs were were veterans, as am I. But these people sometimes had to drive 2 hours one way, spend 3-5 hours hooked up to dialysis, drive home 2 hours, 3-4 times a week. Imagine how much of their life they could reclaim if there was a second VA hospital in the other end of the state. Just one anecdotal example. on the good side, without exception that I saw, the staff are incredibly caring, and respectful of the veterans. This was Durham, NC which has a good reputation. more regional clinics are needed for veterans to just make doctor appointments or get labs done. You can get those things outside of VA if locally not available, but why should they have to. Staff at VA facilities much better understand issues faced by veterans, which can be unique. Not always of course. Many reasons are the same as anyone would have. Just some thoughts. It’s better than it was. It still needs to be better, and better includes expanded access and facilities.

From my experience the biggest problems with the VA have been with getting INTO the system. But once there, the care is generally good. The percentage of people who are satisfied with their care in the VA system is quite a bit higher than those with private insurance (a bit of a low bar, but still). I used to volunteer at a large VA medical center and I found the staff there extremely caring and it was well staffed. The patients I dealt with had chronic conditions and were happy with their care. BUT, it could be better. As much as we spend on the VA system, it's not enough. The aging population of veterans, especially Vietnam War age vets, has stressed the system. For example, during the Obama administration, funding for the VA approximately doubled. The number of patient visits also doubled, HOWEVER, the cost incurred per visit doubled. That math doesn't work. And it has a lot more to do with age related issues than serious injuries that years ago would have been fatal but with today's battlefield treatment and medivac are no longer. Anyway, better, but could be better still. Dave

Ok, feel free to ignore everything I said, then, if you think I'm just repeating other info. I, however think it's useful to compare how the same in game mechanism is handled in real life. Sometimes it's spot on, other times it's greatly abstracted. Knowing what really happens can provide some perspective. (BTW, that was probably me. I'm the artilleryman) Dave