Ultradave
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Posts
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Posts posted by Ultradave
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On 2/10/2024 at 7:18 PM, user1000 said:
January 1945 means this isn't the last module for the game, damn......
It goes through the end of the war in Europe.
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3 hours ago, Bulletpoint said:
Another episode of Keeping up Appearances
Don't mention the war!
My wife and I lived in England for several years. We watched ALL the episodes.
Dave
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It's a fun little scenario. I've played it a number of times, and it's a good one to micromanage everything as you don't have a large number of units to control. I agree that as long as you are careful not to get your Stuart in the way of that AT gun, you can use it for covering fire to advance your men.
Go down low to level 1 and 2 and take a good look at the terrain. There are areas where you can approach behind cover.
Dave
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The AI force picking was greatly improved back a while ago, HOWEVER, it still does bizarre things, and it gets weirder as the battle size gets smaller, like small and tiny. Still needs work.
One thing they are good for though, is to practice tactics. Set up the AI played side as defense and pick their forces, pick your own offensive force, and practice a company assault with a few supporting tanks against a village defended by a platoon with 2 AT guns, for example. You'll know what they have, but not where they are, although you can guess likely locations, which in a lot of real life cases might not be that far off. If you pick reasonable forces for the AI, it will usually do a halfway decent job of setting up, I've found. Or even if it doesn't, you won't know where they are until you find them.
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3 hours ago, Jiggathebauce said:
If he ignores a congressional declaration of war like that, it's treason
Sure, and like I mentioned, he could be impeached - even a Republican House would, I imagine, if they did in fact declare war. Would he be convicted and removed from office? I don't think there's any guarantee of that, even in that situation. But assuming the Senate convicts him and he's out, then what? His hand-picked VP, whichever MAGA sycophant that is, takes over. Does anything change? Or does everyone suddenly throw off the yoke and act "normal" because he has no power anymore? 50/50 - there's still the 8-10-12 however many die-hards in the Republican Party who want to stop everything. On the other hand, if Democrats take over the House, then that crew loses ALL power they have.
Sorry for being pessimistic, but if Trump gets elected, it will be messier than last time. He (or more really his closest advisors) won't make the mistake of putting anyone with any integrity in any position of power.
I'm also pessimistic about the election in general. If Trump wins, well, we've covered that. If Biden wins, does anyone think that Trump will just say "Congrats" and go home? Nope. We could easily see worse than Jan 6.
I'll stop now and get back to play testing and reading everyone elses' commentary, which is always interesting, no matter the viewpoints.
Dave
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Changes? Well, Democrats used to have a majority in the House, and Nancy Pelosi, whatever you may think of her politically, was a masterful Speaker of the House. So things like aide for Ukraine could make it through the House. The Senate, being (supposedly and usually) the more rational of the two houses, had broad support for Ukraine.
Now, Republicans control the House, with a weak and vulnerable Speaker, who has to do a lot of the bidding of the 8 or 12 or whatever the number is based on subject, rebellious Republicans - rebellious to their own party - or lose his job just like the last one did. The Senate remains more or less the same, at least on issues like Ukraine and NATO. Still supportive, but as we've seen just recently with the border security bill, scared witless of Trump, and ready to drop support at his bidding. Maybe that would change after election, should he win. Maybe not.
And the biggest danger that I see is that because of legislation Congress passed, a president cannot remove the US from NATO without the 2/3 consent of the Senate (an impossible hurdle to overcome, IMO), he could effectively render US participation in NATO non-existent. He could, by himself, remove all troops from Europe, or anywhere else. He could refuse to support with arms or troops a NATO ally under attack. He could, as he signaled just recently, invite Russia to do "whatever they Hell they want". He could send home our representatives to NATO's organizational structure and not replace them. He could gut the State Department. ALL of these things are functions of the Executive Branch, under the President's control. All he has to do is give orders for any of that, without Congress being involved.
So while I'm pretty sure their is very broad support for NATO in the Senate, and probably in the House, even with the Republican fringe trying to throw wrenches in the works, they themselves can't order troop movements, or provide aid even if it was voted for successfully and a president signed it. Again, the implementation of any of that falls under the Executive Branch.
Congress only other recourse should a president not honor NATO obligations would be a formal declaration of war against the aggressor. That is in Congress's control. But then, what would a president do, if he didn't agree with the declaration? I think, theoretically, he could just ignore it. If Congress passed bills and a president ignored them, the president could be impeached. But we see how that went, with a closely divided Congress.
This is how I currently see it, anyway.
Dave
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2 hours ago, Maciej Zwolinski said:
Winning a war through atomic bombardment is possible, and it would be a purely attritional action.
"is possible" How, exactly is winning accomplished that way?
Spoiler alert: No winners, 2 losers.
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4 hours ago, FlammenwerferX said:
CM: North Pole, NATO vs Russia
OOh, then you could combine it with the new CMO Showcase:Icebreakers.
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Sometimes it's just someone's lucky day, I think. A near miss, a glancing blow. Maybe the TC saw the shot being fired, and had just enough time to duck and pull down the hatch enough to avoid the flying tree splinters. Mantle hit - glancing blow (looked pretty direct though), happened to hit the heaviest armor on a lightly armored tank?
Like board games, while each bullet/shell is intricately tracked, when it hits, there is some element of chance as to what happens, as there is in real life as well. Think of a real person being shot - a half-inch either way might have been fatal, but "tis but a scratch"
And since in a different thread someone said I can't say such things without the meme, I bring you, the Black Knight.
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I'll have to try it later with good headphones on. Couldn't hear it on my laptop speakers (which are pretty good). Even turned up to the loudest volume all I hear is the squelch break of the radio handset at the end of each transmission.
Dave -
Mac is already 64-bit. I don't know the logistics of changing the PC version. CMO just did it fairly recently and while there were a couple of hiccups, the new version runs great.
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7 hours ago, Sir Lancelot said:
Hi Steve,
Is there any plan to release the Mac versions of the games on Steam? I picked up a couple of the newer releases through Steam, but was surprised to find out that, unlike the games I purchased through Battlefront.com, the Steam version doesn't support my Mac. Thanks!
Sir Lancelot
Sadly, no, there is not. Mac version from Battlefront is the only option, and will remain that way, at least for the foreseeable future.
Dave
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1 hour ago, Vacillator said:
Okay so this is Downfall not Red Thunder (sorry) and I hope my opponent @Ultradave won't mind. I suggested it must class as a KO and he should do the right thing and bail out
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What's not shown is that because of the shear mass of the Tiger, it sheered the tree off at ground level and it's just about to topple over. The TC got a little squeezed in the process though.
Dave
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5 minutes ago, Halmbarte said:
Not shocking considering the tendency for ICM munitions to turn into minefields due to UXO problems...
H
No one goes into the artillery impact areas. They are not normal training areas.
Dave
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I'm on a Mac so dissecting those files is not a thing for me, so I wouldn't know whether either of those are correct TBH
But I did create scenarios with Sherman Vs and look at them and the bow MG appeared to look ok to me.
Dave
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Oh, I would too, but at the time it was more rare than VT fuses! Maybe there were huge stockpiles of it somewhere but we got very little for training.
Dave
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VT fuses of the CW worked great, but we didn't have a large amount of them. I don't know if we had a WW3 in Europe if we would have been provided a lot more or not). You can't fire them over water because they'd get a very strong return off the water and explode too early. And by firing over water, you're probably ok if the body of water is at the apex of the trajectory. If it's closer to the target you may get premature firing. A small stream isn't going to do it. A wide river, small lake definitely would. The same can be true over forested areas if the tree cover is very dense. Strong return off the forest canopy means the fuse can fire too soon - above the canopy. A snow covered canopy would be even more likely to prematurely trigger the fuse. Firing at personnel in heavy woods we would have used Time fuses so that the fuse explodes at a preset time of flight. That flight trajectory is adjusted when computing data so that the shell explodes in the air about 7m above the target rather than impacting the target (basically lifting the trajectory so the point of impact would be behind the target). With time (Mechanical Time) fuses, there's no "radar" component, just a clock, so no chance of that VT premature triggering. You can also use "Quick" fuse (point detonating/impact) and get good results because some of them are going to go off when hitting a tree, creating an airburst in the middle of the woods. (think of the Bastogne perimeter episode of Band of Brothers where they are in their foxholes and trees are "exploding" around them.)
So that tracks pretty well with the in game results above with VT fuses into woods. The game doesn't model mechanical time fuses at all. It's either HE Quick or VT, or later, some time of precision munitions.
Pretty good but very short article on US designed fuses. The mechanical time fuses I saw were the MTSQ-564 - first pic, left hand fuse. Rotate the top to select the time. They'll still go off on impact if for some reason the time doesn't work - either failure or hitting something before time expires.
http://www.inert-ord.net/usa03a/usa6/fuzes/index.html
Dave
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I think it DOES work, but I just can't seem to get the hang of it. The Hunt command with picking my own Hull Down spot, usually does the trick.
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16 hours ago, Andrew Kulin said:
I am full of crap.
Nope. My experience was similar so I gave up. No matter how I fiddled, the tank I tried to get hull down went too far, which of course led almost immediately to explosion and fire. So I do it by eye now. Set an end point for the move, move the camera there and look, and then tweak the endpoint if needed. After a while you get pretty good doing it by eye.
Dave
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1 hour ago, OBJ said:
Hey Dave, got a chuckle, not sure about you but for me road was, 'Retired On Active Duty.'
Ha! Never heard that before. No, I meant the book/movie "The Road" - post apocalyptic wasteland wandering.
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1 hour ago, Stimo said:
1. Can an FO inside a moving vehicle efficiently call in a mission on a TRP?
2. What does the screenshot below mean? Tubes are too hot and fire will resume in 13 minutes, or something else ?
Thank you
1. In real life - absolutely. Just need the map with the references on it and a radio. You don't have to see anything.
Dave
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4 hours ago, The_Capt said:
So long as they don't call me...all will be well.
This made me think that if they get so far down the list that they come to my name, well, building entry doctrine is not going to be the issue we're concerned about. We'll be in "The Road" territory by then.
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5 minutes ago, David Jaros said:
Those campaigns are hard i play British one and it is pain in the arse i do not like those night missions with lot of static germans hidden in trenches . i wished weather was not that brutal too . It is nightmare ! How to deal with it . i can not even call arty because I can not see **** haha
Yeah, imagine being there for real, eh? Nightmare.
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On 1/21/2024 at 8:51 PM, Genushe said:
1. Will Red Thunder's unique aircraft mechanics be expanded to other WW2 titles?
2. Will Steam releases be made available on Mac?
#2 is a no. Windows only on Steam, so no PBEM++ for Mac users. Unless you find it works ok in Parallels Desktop (I don't and I can live without PBEM++ and tournaments).
Dave
CM Fortress Italy is now available on Steam! Here is how to get your Steam key if you already own the game!
in Combat Mission Fortress Italy
Posted
Steam versions are Windows only. So are Slitherene/Matrix versions as far as I know. The only way to get a Mac version is through Battlefront. Keep in mind that the PBEM++ feature is only available in the Windows versions, not the Mac versions. Other than that, there is no difference. That's no big deal for me, but it might be for others. For Mac, PBEM still works the way it always has.
Dave