Ultradave
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Posts
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Days Won
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Posts posted by Ultradave
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2 hours ago, IanL said:
Interesting I had it in my head that it was historically accurate the way the game is not. However my entries in the FAQ do *not* actually say that. They just explain how the game works - as above. Very interesting.
So, @Ultradave is the issue already reported? I don't remember it being discussed. Mind you it could have been before my time.
I looked and I don't see it in Mantis. Tried searching several ways.
Dave
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5 hours ago, BFCElvis said:
There is no installer for this. If you want to safely test this without worry, use copy/paste and remove your current v1.07 brz file from the Data folder. Then place the new on in the Data folder. If it doesn't work then you can copy/paste your existing one back into the folder.
Both Jeff Smith and I tested this. I checked several scenarios and so did he, and it fixed the problem. Also, the "new" 1.07 .brz really isn't new and untested. It's just the one from the Windows version and that has been working fine. There was just something corrupted about the Mac installer. I wouldn't worry. If it doesn't work, well, it didn't work before.
If you are still on 1.06, then do this:
Relabel the CW directory to "Combat Mission Cold War - 1.06" or something like that , just so it's not the default installation name.
Download a fresh 1.07 CW full installer
Install using defaults.
Don't even try to run it yet, but replace the 1.07 .brz file with the new one.
Now you can run it.
If it doesn't work, just delete that whole installation and go back to using 1.06 (it will work).
Dave
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In other news, I owe you a turn. I'll get right on it!!
Dave
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32 minutes ago, Vacillator said:
Dave, feel free not to answer this as it's not really fair to ask you, but I'll ask anyway.
Are all of the things on 'the list of things to fix' actively being looked at by Charles or whoever? I would imagine some kind of 'order system', like:
- these ones absolutely need to be fixed urgently as they ruin aspects of the game
- these ones need to be fixed but not so urgently
- these ones would fix historical accuracy
- these ones would fix appearances
- these ones are a waste of time even thinking about
- etc.
Not necessarily the above but you know what I mean...
Yes, to 1-4. Entries are categorized by game, by severity, (like game-breaking down to minor graphics or QOL). There's also a way to indicate it applies to all games. And the "by game" is broken down by version, so that when a new patch is being tested, bugs can be categorized specifically to the new version.
I don't think anyone posts an issue that would apply to number 5. Usually, in the beta forum there is some discussion if it's an oddball or potentially either non-fixable or working as designed prior to posting, but pretty much the beta testers know when they reproduce something that they just go post it without a bunch of back and forth discussion, maybe just a heads up that "I found these 5 issues and posted a Mantis report for each", so there isn't duplication.
Then there is a robust search tool, to go look at status, or use keywords and choices to see if something is already posted.
Hope that helps.
Dave
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13 hours ago, Erwin said:
That is correct. The question is how is that realistic?
It's not. HE rounds don't get converted to Smoke in real life. And there *should* be enough fuzes for all the rounds, regardless of what types. We usually had extra fuzes. I think this is on the list of things to fix somewhere. I'll try to search for it.
Dave
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Any large scale paradrop these days requires much more complete local air superiority than used to be the case to have a chance of success. And the term local is much broader than say, 30 years ago during the Cold War.
1) You have to have enough fighter support to prevent enemy fighters from breaking through to your transport planes.
2) You have to suppress local AA defenses. Even in the Cold War period extensive deployment of MANPADS was just beginning.
3) You have to suppress long range AA missile systems. That means a *huge* effort at SEAD in advance of the airdrop, due to the long range of many of today's AA missiles.
Neither Ukraine or Russia have the assets to do this right now, especially Ukraine, but I seriously doubt Russia can do it either. My opinion is that the US would have a very difficult time of it if we were fighting in that theatre.
Dave
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It's figured out, and John should be posting a new .brz file for Mac users to download and replace the existing one. It's a very small file. Then 1.07 will work correctly.
Just have to wait for John to officially do it
At some point I assume the installers will get recompiled so any new downloads will work properly.
Dave -
I'll have to ask John. I don't see a copy in the Sharefile site (where all the beta stuff is).
Dave
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No, not that I'm aware of. I left mine at v1.06 and everything runs just fine.
I don't even know what needs to be fixed
I will try a clean install now to see if it's still an issue. There have been a couple of updated versions of Sonoma since then, and the file on the BF website is still the same, so it will check if it's something to do with Sonoma. I pretty sure that's not it, but it can't hurt to try.
Dave
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1 hour ago, Probus said:
I'm not giving the IDF a pass on these situations, but the vehicles just look like white vans/cars. I don't see any markings on them that would indicate they are doctors. Did the 'red crosses' get burned off the vehicles maybe?
Note the pictures lower in the article of the NON burned out vehicles with MSF in large red letters on the hoods and the MsF logo and name along the side. Plenty large enough to see. These are recognized worldwide, never change, and the burned out vehicles at the top are that way BECAUSE the IDF came back after the fact and destroyed them... at the clinic MsF runs, which is a known location.
So no. No passes. No excuses. Note also that MsF took 2 weeks to make sure their accusations were accurate.
Dave
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On 12/14/2023 at 5:56 PM, Ultradave said:
And then what? When all this is over whatever "over" means, what comes next. There will be no place to live, no hospitals, no clean water, no electricity, and even MsF may rethink having their staff there after their convoy being attacked. Thankfully, they are still there, I believe.
Quoting myself because I finally remembered to go look again for the account, detailed here in a statement by MsF. There seems no doubt here that they were deliberately targeted, on more than one occasion, and their mission and also evacuation obstructed.
I'm surprised this did not get more press than it did at the time. Perhaps because when they issued this statement they had carefully investigated it themselves for 2 weeks so it was "old news".
I'd be very surprised if anyone accused MsF of having any agenda, or harbouring any Hamas sympathizers. They do good work all over the world, often in danger to themselves, and they are CLEARLY recognizable. Everyone knows who they are without ambiguity.
Well, I'm giving it press, I guess, for what that's worth. Again it falls in the category of making things worse, not better.
Dave
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2 minutes ago, Harmon Rabb said:
After reading the last few pages I have a sudden urge to give the ignore feature a try.
Let the record show, this is the first time I have ever used this feature on this forum.
It's pretty useful for your blood pressure. There are are number of unnamed individuals on my list, and for very good reason as I'm pretty tolerant.
Dave -
1 hour ago, IanL said:
Making the powerful occupying force overreact in order to bolster the fighter group's support among the oppressed is a time honoured tradition the IRA was doing it back when I was a kid I'm sure they were not the first.
My wife and I were having this discussion last night. The current situation is going to create more supporters of Hamas. How can it not? And no doubt that was part of the original goal of Hamas's attack. They aren't dumb. They had to know what the Israeli response would be and went ahead, knowing the consequences would be catastrophic for Gaza's infrastructure and the people living there. And the reaction of Gazans could go two ways. 1) drive supporters to Hamas because "look what the Israelis are doing to us", or 2) ostracize Hamas because "look what you caused" It always seems to go the #1 option, which is probably what Hamas was/is counting on.
And then what? When all this is over whatever "over" means, what comes next. There will be no place to live, no hospitals, no clean water, no electricity, and even MsF may rethink having their staff there after their convoy being attacked. Thankfully, they are still there, I believe.
Dave
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16 hours ago, Haiduk said:
It's impossible to win, when you have a deal with cruel orcs, which spit on all conventions, but "deeply concerned" international community to force you adhere to these conventions for orcs. "If you take no prisoners, if you hit their cities, power plants, if you allow losses among their "innocent" civilians, you will turn to orcs themeselves! This will be not correspond with democracy values, human rights etc!" People lost feeling of reality and live in own ivory towers with rose unicorns...
That argument is akin to what we heard here in the US when some people, both within government and without, defended the use of torture (kindly described as "enhanced interrogation techniques").
The "feeling of reality" is that should Ukraine decide to not adhere to conventions on warfare, despite Russia spitting on them, you'd see public support for Ukraine evaporate. And quickly. Also evaporating would be any hope of Ukraine being admitted to the EU and NATO in the future.
We had lots of debate about things like this during Iraq and Afghanistan. We are (or at least try hard to be) the "good guys." You *cannot* lower yourselves into the gutter of the opposition. Is it going to cost you to do that? Yes, it most certainly is, in money, time and lives. And I fully acknowledge that in Iraq and Afghanistan we were not fighting for the survival of our country, and I sympathize and support the fact that you are. A better example might be WW2. We (the Allies) for the most part, behaved, knowing full well the Germans and Japanese did not (I'm excepting Russian behavior as part of the Allies here, because after all, that's who we are talking about and some things don't change much).
You'll no doubt be aware that soldiers accused of war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan were highly publicized, and many put on trial. And the reason we know about it is that it was by FAR, the exception, and the fact that mostly we police our own. We're not perfect - far from it. But we do try. And it starts at the top with the communicated expectation of what won't be tolerated.
Dave
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48 minutes ago, Zeleban said:
This is exactly what the Russian artillerymen are complaining about. He says that instead of balanced sheaves of gunpowder, in Korean charges the gunpowder is mixed, so there is no way to quickly change the firing range
I didn't see that in the list of complaints in the article, which is why I asked. It seemed the loading, quality and type of powder all varied, but the pictures appear to show ALL the powder charge wired together, apparently as it was designed to be. One size fits all, or as someone else said, charge measured to reach Seoul.
There isn't even any visible means improperly installed to have distinct charge levels.
In any case, the end result is sketchy powder charges, with the possibility of a lot of banana peeled howitzer tubes in the future. I'd not want to be a Russian artillery crewman, knowing the ammo was suspect. Of course, the average Russian artillery crewman may not know this.
Dave
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1 hour ago, Carolus said:
https://mil.in.ua/en/news/russians-complain-about-the-quality-of-artillery-shells-from-the-dprk/
About the North Korean shells. Shows a picture of the propellant of three different charges.
This is interesting. Besides the obvious quality issues, I'm wondering how they actually work. In US, and UK artillery (although my UK experience was years ago), the powder charge is made up of separate bags of powder, usually 7. This is true whether cased like 105mm, or separate, like 155mm. You normally want to be in a position for range to the potential targets to fire charge 4 or 5. More accuracy, less wear. So part of the firing order from the FDC to the guns is "Charge 4". They cut the extra 3 and drop them in a pit behind the gun and put the case back on (105mm) or remove 5, 6, 7 and retie the 1-4 bags in a stack (155mm). Same thing, the extras are stacked, dropped in a pit, whatever, behind the piece.
These appear from the picture to have one charge, with no options, leaving all the range variation completely to firing data.
Does anyone know differently? I have no experience with Soviet era/ Russian artillery beyond seeing a D-30 set up and fired once from a distance at Fort Bragg (now Ft. Liberty). The artilleryman in me is curious.
Dave
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On 12/7/2023 at 9:49 PM, Vet 0369 said:
LOL, while I understand and sympathize with you, I live in the Peoples Democratic Republic of Massachusetts, so ALL of our Federal Representatives and Senators, and most of our State Representatives and State Senators are Democrats, and I refuse to associate with any of them since Ted Kennedy left the Senate. He at least would reach across the aisle and negotiate with the Republicans “for the good of the country” as would the Republicans of that era. Today, EVERYONE’s philosophy is “my way or the highway.” In both parties!
I live in Rhode Island and my Senators (Reed and Whitehouse) are both very competent and reasonable men, willing to work to get things done. Sheldon Whitehouse, especially, is almost always the smartest and most prepared in the room. I would not want to testify in front of a committee he was on if I was on shaky ground. I'm happy with my representation. My House representative recently changed, as the old one, who I really liked, retired (Jim Langevin - the guy with the interesting wheelchair that somehow stands up on 2 wheels). The new guy is young and an unknown - Democrat - it is RI after all.
Dave
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14 hours ago, The_MonkeyKing said:
Protip, no paywall if you just register. I think you get like 5 free articles a month
Used to subscribe, but won't even read it anymore after their Editorial Board article opining that step one to reducing the deficit is cutting back on veteran's benefits. Nope.
The gist of their opinion being that veterans are getting partial disability but still able to work. Well, duh. It's not JUST about work. It's about life. What if the partial disability was that they lost a hand or lower arm and can no longer play piano, or they lost almost all of their hearing, or they were a marathon runner and lost a lower leg, or two.... I could go on, but it's about compensation for life altering injuries caused by being sent into combat. Sure, in *all* of those examples, the veteran can work, at some job, even good jobs, maybe even the job they were in before the service. But life overall has become different now, with great loss to the important things in life. It's not *just about work. As a former chief engineer who was our group leader told me once (and one of the smartest guys I ever knew), "You work to live, not live to work."
Sorry for the off-topic but this is a huge sore spot with me. The WaPo got slaughtered in the comments for that editorial but they did not retract it or comment in any way. Someone pointed out that no one who wrote that garbage ever served. Not surprised.
We return you now to your regular warfare news.
To make an on-topic post, for myself, being essentially a Cold Warrior (although things in the 82d could occasionally get "interesting"), I would have *loved* to have the technology that is available for today's artillery. Watching all the videos of using drones to call and adjust artillery fire. These are real game changers in supporting fire. Imagine the savings in ammunition there has been because of the ability to see the enemy so much better, or to see him AT ALL, even when out of sight of any forward observer. And even at that, both sides burn through artillery ammo at a staggering rate. Coolest thing we had were the very first laser target designators and we thought that was Star Wars level stuff at the time.
Dave
PS - I subscribe to the NYT and the Times of London, so if anyone wants an article gifted from those, let me know
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On 11/25/2023 at 10:47 AM, Ales Dvorak said:
Thanks for info Ultradave. I'm on M1, graphic is cool, except shaders, but I believe M2 is much better in performance. Are shaders on M2 ok?
Not perfect, but in comparison to my 5+ year old i5 MacBook Pro, they are fine, and the performance is stellar on everything. 12 CPUs, 19 graphics cores - it does really well on anything. Since I got $500 for trading in my old one, I spent that on more cores and a larger drive and the 14" model, rather than 13", figuring I want it to not be outdated for at least 5-6 years.
Dave -
3 hours ago, Redwolf said:
Well, it seems that Apple's deprecated OpenGL is a billion times better than AMD's ongoing one
I wouldn't be too concerned about this.
This is true. I'm sure that OpenGL will still work until who knows when, just that don't expect any improvement in *how well* it works
Dave
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Apple is eventually eliminating support for OpenGL. My guess would be there is no further work going on at Apple to do anything to better accommodate OpenGL graphics, so what's there is all there will be. I will say my new-ish M2 MacBook Pro with all its graphics processors does pretty well. The difference to my old one (2018 i5) is staggering. The map is rendered much farther out and camera movement is nice and smooth. Even the initial setup of "The Citadel" in CW is useable (couldn't move the camera before with the old MacBook Pro.
Dave
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1 hour ago, Vacillator said:
Having played this from the other side against @Ultradave I know what a game it is. Great pics!
That's a scary picture with that Panther out in the open. Those Russian tanks only need one hit to KO the Panthers. They are slow but pack a huge punch. I tried hard to sneak around and watch from cover and hull down. Even then....
Dave
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17 hours ago, Sojourner said:
Looks like the U.S is shifting from supporting Ukraine to supporting Russia.
The idea of the first is to get a continuing resolution passed so the government doesn't grind to a stop. Arguing over Ukraine aid might pass but could have significantly delayed things. This Friday is the deadline I believe.
There has been talk for quite a while about passing the budget bill, and having a separate bill for Israel aid + Ukraine aid + US Disaster relief funding in one separate bill.
Now, I'm not sure that's the magic cure, but just that's what been discussed as a way forward. There is still broad support in Congress for Ukraine aid and tying it to Israel aid makes it harder to vote down by those opposed to Ukraine aid. Those are the same people who tossed out former Speaker McCarthy, so while they are a minority, they hold more sway than their numbers.
As to the second, no idea why the Pentagon couldn't have discovered that if journalists did.
Dave -
I think the difference probably is that Apple is eventually deprecating OpenGL, so I would guess there is little being done to optimize its performance. That means that the 19 graphics cores in my M2 (or 100!!) don't do much good. It's only very marginally better than my previous i5 based MBP. The separate GPU would handle the OpenGL better.
Dave
Annual look at the year to come - 2023
in Combat Mission - General Discussion
Posted · Edited by Ultradave
I had a section chief who, after a phone call with Naval Reactors told us, "10 years from now he won't remember you were late, but he WILL remember if you were wrong, forever."
My favorite boss I had in 38 years at EB. Of course we always tried our best to hit the deadlines, but not at the expense of being correct. It was nuclear submarine reactor plant design, after all. Incorrect is not an option.
Dave