niall78

Yeah, 'greater oversight' is simply a lie.  The same way when well-documented Putinist Rand Paul used 'oversight' to delay UKR aid for a short time early in the war.  Let's not mince words.  It's a lie.  Biden could s--t gold and apply it directly to the deficit and it would still be opposed.  Congress/Senate/Presidency were designed to encourage compromise, but this will be just obstruction the same way it was under Obama, especially if the psycho faction (MJ Greene, Gaetz, etc) are prominent.  
UKR aid is probably one of the very very few things that could pass.

I agree with this.  Look, we are talking about thousands of pounds of HE being flung around that theatre on nearly an hourly basis.  Although we talk about precision and its effects on the modern battlespace a lot here, the reality is that warfare is still a human activity and as such will be prone to human error in either the manufacture or employment of weapon systems.  
It is tragic that two innocent people in Poland got killed in this strike but people do not need to do a Zapruder Film level of analysis here - a weapon system went way off target (experts are leaning toward a UA GBAD system) and landed where it was not supposed to.  This validates The_Capt's Rule of War #18 - in war things get broke - if you don't want things to get war-broke, don't go to war.  How many incidents of US/western "whoopsies" with long range fires are out there from Afghan weddings to the freakin Chinese embassy on Belgrade?
These are not an international conspiracy or complex disinformation operation - a freakin missile went off course and landed on a farm.  Again, this really sucks for the victims and their families, but this is not a strategic turning point etc.  What this does do is highlight just how dangerous this stupid war is, and how easy it would be for mistakes to lead to uncontrolled escalation. 

One of possible reasons of missile accident - improved Kh-101 missiles, last batches of whicn now equipped with EW counter-measuring equipment against SA-missiles. UKR missile could lost targeting or drawn away by EW work.
Condolences to Poland... Despite this is a war and many wars had border accidents, but... lives can't be turned back.  
 

https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/election-results-congress-senate-house-11-12-2022/index.html
Bipartisan support or no, the facts of Democratic control of the Senate and a very slim Republican majority in the house absolutely guarantees US support and an inevitable Ukrainian victory. Even a premature death/incapacitation of Biden would do little to affect long term and sustained support. 
For Biden personally, I'd say beating Trump and Putin are too massive legacies he will probably look back on with unending satisfaction. 
Crimea delenda est. 

Hollywood mythology, which has not done the profession of arms many favours in my opinion.  Espionage does not equal immediate death sentence, at least not in the west since the late 40s - in fact they would be smarter to try and turn any captures so they can penetrate sabotage networks.
They are normally assigned the label of “unlawful or unprivileged” combatant but that needs to be established by a process as well.  And then as unlawful combatants they do not fall under the Geneva Conventions Article 3 but do for Article 4, which entitles them to a fair criminal trial.  They should be prosecutable under Ukrainian law, especially is a war measures act is in place. However, cutting them deals and sending them home is more likely to get more saboteurs to surrender than summary executions.
If we shot everyone dressed in civies trying to kill us in Afghanistan there would have bloody executions on live stream nearly daily…which would have went over fantastically I am sure.  No, Ukraine will likely arrest and prosecute the really bad ones and use the rest for PoW exchanges.
For those interested wiki is not a bad place to start and I know the Geneva Conventions are online in multiple places as well:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unlawful_combatant
 
 

I think history will reflect favourably on Biden.  He has effectively lead the western response and the sharing of intelligence on Russian intentions prior to the Feb invasion blunted any surprise.  The courage and determination of the Ukrainian people have been an inspiration.  They have earned their place in the drivers seat of their self determination.
Zelensky, at least to this external observer, has been a great leader. He has been relentless in his pleas for support to the world.  He is held in high regard amongst the public.
 

https://www.thebulwark.com/the-liberation-of-kherson/
A big outcome of the US elections is that the candidates pushing hardest to reduce aid to Ukraine last pretty badly. For you non-US folks, the out party tends to crush in the mid terms. This time, it didn't. Really good news.

Well guys, at last I got this!  Symbolically in the day of Kherson liberation ) 
Thank you @Kinophile for this initiative and enough "family diplomacy" in resolving of sudden obstacle on "last mile" 😀
Thank you @Battlefront.com - Steve, your "bribe" ) will be worked out ))))
Thank you all, who donated anonymously
Thank you, all other, who just have been reading and support our country - first two months were some nervous and psychologically hard, so this my 24/7 "marathone" here was giving me some emotional relief. 
 

As did the French. It's a lamentable fact the French fought pretty hard in a losing fight only to have that forgotten soon after.

russians die in hundreds daily for bits of ground, they are ready to keep dying for nothing as long as it serves the "greater purpose" - but losing what they stole is never it. I would hardly believe it's not some kind of trap for which they've been preparing for months. Hope our MoD knows better.

So out of the gate I just want to say that Combat Mission Cold War is fantastic and is probably my favorite Combat Mission. Overall everything seems exceptionally well done and I am having tons of fun with the Campaign and Scenarios. I think I may have found an issue with M735 and M774 ammunition however. While playing various missions and some quick battle multiplayer with some friends, I noticed that the T-64A was remarkably durable. I didnt think too much of this at first, because I was expecting the T-64 to be a tough nut to crack. But as time went on I started to notice that it might be a bit too tough.
M735 and M774 are not capable of penetrating the front glacis plate of T-64A, in combat mission. I have not tested this agaisnt the other Soviet tanks with similar armor compositions, so I am not sure if this potential problem pertains to those tanks as well. If the same issue exists there, much of this post may be relevant to those tanks also since they have the same or similar armor profiles on the glacis.
 
I would like to start out by showing how the current game models the mentioned APFSDS vs the named target. I performed this test at 1000m, 0 degrees angle. I used RISE Passives for the M735 test and M60A3 TTS for the M774 testing. I counted each APFSDS fired to ensure I was not confusing sabot hits with other types of ammo the AI might choose to fire. I did the tests after noticing the durability of the T-64 glacis in various battles to verify under controlled conditions what I suspected was happening. In the screenshots you will notice that HEAT and Sabot hits have a different damage decal. To summarize the results, neither round can reliably penetrate the T-64 glacis. The game appears to model the weak point near the drivers hatch as the "upper front hull" and the main glacis as the "super structure front hull." M735 is ineffective against the superstructure and can occasionally gain penetrations against the driver plate area. M774 is slightly more effective with almost all rounds that hit the superstructure bouncing off, but very occasionally one will get though. M774 also tends to get through the driver plate area fairly reliably. However in both cases many of the hits to the driver plate area are counted as partial penetrations and not complete penetrations, which is odd considering that there is basically no composite armor in this area. Partial penetrations can seen in these screenshots via a smaller hole decal. They are rare for both rounds, especially vs superstructure.
 
M735:




 
M774:


 
The T-64A glacis plate uses a laminate armor array that consisted of 80mm of steel followed by 105mm of texolite followed by a 20mm backing plate of RHA. This armor greatly increased protection against shaped charges while still providing good protection against kinetic threats.  For additional visualization purposes, I will use some screenshots from war thunder in some areas. There will also be screenshots from various books and webpages.
 

 

Source: https://thesovietarmourblog.blogspot.com/2017/12/t-72-part-2.html#8010520

From Zaloga's T-64 Battle Tank:

 
 
 
 
The Combat Mission CW manual states that M735 has 410mm of penetration and M774 has 440mm of penetration. These numbers are identical to the ones quoted on the steel beasts wiki, and are listed as being for a range of 3000m. I will include the table here, as well as some other rounds which will be relevant.

 
From Tankograd: https://thesovietarmourblog.blogspot.com/2017/12/t-72-part-2.html#8010520

 
The above simulation shows that M735 would certainly penetrate the 80/105/20 array and then some at 1000m.

 
The Israeli M111 APFSDS was a derivative of the M735. It would appear to be ballistically of similar performance due to that and the penetration values on the SB wiki. Russian testing of this round revealed that it could penetrate

From Tankograd:

It should be noted here that the T-72A and M1 featured a even thicker armor array than the one on the T-64, going to 60mm RHA/105mm texolite/50mm RHA. So if this could be penetrated by M111 it stands to reason that M735 could go through the weaker T-64A armor.
 
After the end of the cold war T-72M1's were shot at with various German ammunition, including DM33 which is similar in performance to M774. These T-72s have the extra armor added later in the early 80s. It should be noted as well that the extra armor plates are past the scope of CMCW since they were not implemented until after the 1982 Israeli conflicts. DM33 105mm APFSDS penetrated the hull at 2km.

 
Additionally, here is how M735 performs in steel beasts at 1840m, which is using the same penetration numbers as the CMCW manual (the picked range was just as close as I could get to 2km in the editor without spending 1 million hours trying to get it exact):


 


 
 
Based on the general evidence, I think that the M735 and M774 ammunition should be made much more effective in game. M735 should be effective agaisnt the T-64A armor out to any practical range and M774 should be capable agaisnt the T-72A armor if it is not already, which I am guessing it is not based on in game performance agaisnt the worse T-64A armor array.

A geeky part of me want to see the technology go all the way to at least 1996-1997.....So I can then play out all those fun scenarios from one of my fave RPGs, Twilight:2000.

I'd have grave doubts calling Ambrose a historian. I had the misfortune to purchase his book on the development of the North American railways and found it truly atrocious. Even my layman's knowledge knew what I was reading was bad history - which a few quick web searches confirmed. 
Anyone reading his WW2 books should remember Albert Blithe. This guy would write anything without any fact checking. I don't have time to research if the facts in books I'm reading are actually real or just the authors make-believe facts. Dreadful stuff to waste money on when there is so much quality well written well researched history on the market these days. 

I'm working on Sadr city, but it will be a while, it is freakin huge.

If this keeps up we'll have a good piece of Baghdad covered. sburke is doing Sadr City, I've been working on a map of East Baghdad/ Rustamiyah for a while now.

I think Cooper woulda $hit a brick at yankee know how - IIRC he was a thru and thru southerner.
Jokes aside youre right and Stephen Ambrose used to be the worst in books for that. I remember distinctly the Ambrose craze in the late 90s. It also sucked because I was only 13 or 14 but loved history and was pretty aware that Ambrose minimized every other Allies achievements versus the US on Germans; and I felt that he insulted the memory of a lot of men by either exagerrating or deflating the quality and numbers of the Germans facing US troops to whatever suited his narrative better. Of course try telling some grown up thats not into history but just read Citizen Soldiers that you think he.s a moron cuz x y and z lol no one is willing to take you seriously or if they do theyre not gonna allow a teenager to one up them amd will deny it regardless. Sigh. The days before I could argue with someone, challenge them to put money on some obscure bs, and then whip out my phone and google my free 5 bucks

September.

September.

September.

September.

September.

September.

For nigh on ten years now my biggest projects have always been my portrait mods. I have invested weeks and months on end, that have added up to hundreds and hundreds of hours of time and frustration creating them. I have made easily over ten thousand portraits, through trial and error, redesign, and updates. It's been a true struggle at times, and I am never happy with the outcome, though I'll say I am, once a project is complete. But I am always fighting the design decisions I started with way back in SF1 and it's hamstrung me artistically. After the FB portraits I decided I wanted to redo all the portraits for all the titles (the BN mod is long over do for an update) . So, after a long hiatus, I set about trying to get to someplace that would finally make me happy. I decided to start with RT to get ahead of the module release, and after a week or so of fiddling, resizing, making test bmps, and checking in game, this is what I came up with.

For about two seconds I thought they looked good. But once again I was confronted by the poor design decisions I adopted all those years ago. You see, I have been in a constant fight with what I term the "bobble head effect", which causes the portrait heads to appear bulbous and fat-headed. It occurs because I opted to show each portrait with a split face on the bmp. It has been my bane since my BN mod and it frustrates me to no end. And considering how I built each face from screenshots, pieces of faces from all sorts of pictures, and the fact I only worked on the left side of the face, well it doesn't leave me room for presenting them in any other way. And On top of all that, I have always felt there was inconsistency in the quality of the faces, and that they appeared too cartoony.  So with that said, I am putting these portrait mods to rest. I have taken them as far as they will go and they have reached a dead end. They had a good run but there really isn't anything more I can do to improve them.

 
 
 
 
 
 
Now, check out what I have been doing for the last two weeks and tell me I didn't make the right decision...



Now for some comparisons of the old style and the new.


 
Now the portraits in the context of their own mod. It'll give you an idea of the overall design.


 
And within the context of the game UI.


 
Some of the portraits are tentative/place holders until I find something that really blows me away. Or will be replaced later. The Heer Armor and Armor Infantry come to mind as far as that goes. Luckily I haven't made anything yet with them, just tests.
Now, unfortunately I will probably have to share a lot of the portraits (mostly Germans) across games, however backgrounds and the like will be changed for each setting.  And I will of course do all the battalions and regiments etc. Whether or not I will be able to keep the quality across titles remains to be seen but I will do my best. It is going to be a colossal amount of work, already has been. For the Germans alone I have created and discarded over a thousand portraits. LOL. Every time I think I have one down and start producing keepers, I stumble across a better pic, or I adjust some color to better fit the portrait into the overall look and I have to redo a ton of work. I just replaced the Heer Infantry yesterday, now I have to redo 374 that I had already made, as well as the SS Arm Infantry. I have done this a couple times already. But getting it right is what's most important. Perfection is what I am aiming for.
I don't know how long it will take. Getting the right pics is painstaking and laborious as hell. For every good one I make I throw out five. But this style will be the definitive version of my portrait mods from here on out. As I complete them I will remove the old versions from the planet. I'll start threads in the corresponding game forums as I progress.
Welp, that's about it. I was gonna keep all this to myself and wait to surprise everyone, but I have been working in a vacuum for a month and it feels good to talk a little bit about it. Especially as I have been going full bore, night and day for two weeks straight. I Hope you guys like what you see. I think it's the best work I have ever done.

Mord.
 

Gentlemen first of all I would like to thank each and every one of you for supporting and remembering me. I'm not gone, I was on a break because life is busy. I will be around here, I will not stop producing content and I will always be greatful that this forum gave me this unique opportunity to meet people like you. Thank you for your support. I will be posting news about my mods everytime I got a decent amount of them done.  I will also work on updates. CMBS will be moded by me constantly. It is my favorite game in series and I will never let it go. Pherhaps at some point my time will be so limited that I will not be able to post a lot but I will always do something. 
Moreover, I've just created a new topic - Oleksandr's Modding Space for CMSF2 - so I will mod that game when it will came out. 
Last but not least, I was amazed that people remember me. Thank you gentlemen you can always count on my support. I will not forget your nice words (and I mean it I will not forget it) and I will try to do my best to bring what I can to our community. Thank you for sharing and supporting my vision. It is an honor for me. 
P.S. Arguments will always be there, some people like me some people don't. But I can tell you one thing for sure - I'm not planing to get involved into any types of conflicts with anyone. Life is too short for that. Thank you once again. I consider all of you gentlemen as my friends because you supported me when I was away. Those things mean a lot to me. I want you to know that you can contact me via msg any time and you always will be welcome. Thank you for your attention and for your nice words once again. God Bless you, your families, and things you do in life.