Ts4EVER

Tell that to our propaganda...

Do you really think people in Europe don't use the word "woman" anymore? Dunno what right-wing nonsense you are consuming, but I would stop, otherwise people might come to the conclusion that more aid to Ukraine is not necessary since they apparently already got bombed back into the stone age anyway.

Yeah, that is what I meant with "un-winnable mid-term". That seems kinda bleak though, WW1 style pointless trench warfare without a clear way out.

So basically the war is lost or at least unwinnable mid-term?

I mean obviously NATO can easily outspend and outproduce Russia, at least long term, but is this actually going to happen? It seems the political will to do that is not that secure.

But logistically, isn't Russia still in advantage?

Still playing the Spearhead campaign, I have finally reached the big Elsdorf scenario, which seems to represent an early highlight of the campaign:

Hamas lives in Gaza like royalty and in order to justify their rule, they have to a) show that they are actively fighting the Israeli Apartheid regime. b) provoke an overwhelming response with mass casualties. At the same time the Israeli right-wing needs Hamas in order to justify their own existence and aid in the creation of a proto-fascist bonapartist regime. Both feed off each other and the regular outbursts of violence are a piece of political theatre that would frankly be funny if real people didn't get killed.

There are people on twitch live streaming making songs in one evening...

Interesting, they dont seem to tell apart MP40s and MP43s in that weapon report, which seems risky from a resupply standpoint...

Much can change politically in that timeframe, including a more direct involvement by China or some other unforeseen crisis that changes global outlook significantly...

That seems kind of obvious though, every human system collapses at some point or at least gets majorly transformed...

I have to admit that I have reached a point of helpless apathy in regards to this topic. I had already concluded that American democracy (and by extension that in much of the west) was probably a dead man walking back in 2016, both because of the Trump victory and the "not my president" protests following it. The 2020 insurrection just confirmed this. You simply can not run a democracy if people do not believe that the results of elections are beyond doubt. It's like running a monarchy if people don't believe that you can inherit power by blood. The whole succession of power becomes unworkable. In my mind the fatal mistake was probably not implementing some kind of "new deal" after the 2008 crisis and the failure of the "Occupy" movement. That led to a situation where the only perspective for any kind of "better world" for most people came from the right (however unrealistic it might be) and the left was forced to play the part of "leave everything as is, but maybe a bit better in some places (if possible, maybe not, we will see)." That is like conceding the initiative on the battlefield and lead us to the present situation.

Regarding 2), this was changed in the latest patches for all the WW2 games. I think this is for historical reasons, since Germans tended to concentrate MP44s in Sturm units. That said, probably "Sturm" variants should be made available to more unit types (think Fallschirmjäger Sturm, Panzergrenadier Sturm) since these units did receive MP44s and it is plausible that they also formed these units.

Sounds worryingly like when the Germans started to comb out rear units to fill the front.

To be honest, I find myself somewhat underwhelmed by this expansion. The content I have tried so far is fine, but it falls short of expectations in terms of scale. What it is missing is that "big thing" that gets you excited about it. In Fire and Rubble that was the Volkssturm stuff, which was completely new to CM and really unique. Downfall is a big content upgrade to Final Blitzkrieg, but in terms of the Combat Mission series as a whole, it does not actually add that much new stuff, with most of the formations and assets being ported over from other game families. Sure, the Volkssturm guys are still cool, but certainly not new anymore and frankly, I find it a bit weird that Downfall leans so heavily on those scenario and campaign wise, considering that they tended to surrender or go home on the western front, compared to the east. Obviously there is not much new stuff you can realistically do with the Germans, but if you had asked me about this module before it came out, I would have bet that the new "big thing" was amphibious vehicles and river crossings, the capability of which exists in the engine, with various LVTs, maybe footbridges and campaigns at Walcheren and during Operation Varsity to use these new systems. That would have been cool and exciting and, at least to me, the obvious direction for the game to take. All of this is completely absent though. I guess the Schwimmwagen was added, but no allied amphibious gear? This timeframe would also be perfect for adding Commandos and Rangers (which already exist in Italy BTW). There are the new super late war vehicles and weapons like the Pershing and Comet, but even in that area there is lots of unused potential that would have made the module feel way more unique and interesting. Just from the top of my head: Sherman Tulips, Sherman Crocodiles with fuel trailers (used at Juelich, another river crossing), Super Pershing... personally I am more of an infantry guy, so for those few of us: Why not add M1 Carbines modified for full auto capability, a common field modification, with kits being shipped officially? I could even think of some more German stuff that could be used to spice those up a bit, like the PAW-600 AT gun that was actually used at the Aller against British forces. In a similar vain, heavy AA gun formations that the allies overran (anti bomber positions), 10.5cm, 12.8cm AA guns... Maybe the 8.8cm improvised AT guns made from unused Jagdpanther guns, used at the "Düren belt"? And of course, since the MP40 was being phased out of production, some Beretta M38/42 for the Volksgrenadiers. Anyway, my point is, the module feels light on exciting new content and like more could have been done with the scenario.

Adding to the Ukrainian refugee issue, as a German school teacher I can tell you that there is a massive „lost generation“ coming up, of refugee children and teenagers in foreign countries who didn‘t finish their Ukrainian schools and at the same time learned close to nothing in their „new country“, in part because they felt they would soon be back home and took nothing we did seriously. Now the rumor is that the education ministry in our state will pass down new directives soon to cover this up, regarding the grading of the students. Normally the rule is that we start grading them the 2nd year they are in country (we did it like that for the Afghans and Syrians etc.), but the performance of the Ukrainian students is so catastrophic that apparently the rules will be changed.

In my view kevin is right that, much like in WW1, both side's initial plans have failed. The Russians failed to blitz Ukraine, the West failed to strangle Russia's economy and have Ukraine win the war with donated pre-war stock. So now that the war is in limbo, it is a good point to ask how to proceed (and if to proceed, in some cases).

The war must really be a stalemate, what with there being talk of aliens here now...

The armored ones have them, they are gone from the motorized variant. My guess is this might have occured when the G41 was introduced, but not sure.

I think this or an earlier patch overwrote special FI tables of equipments for the Germans, namely the Grenadier and mot. Panzergrenadier ones, with ones from the other game families. These units don't use the captured Berettas anymore, they are only present in the Gebirgsjägers now.

Our researcher over at FH2 recently dug up two interesting documents. These are US intelligence reports based on captured documents of the 2nd and 3rd FJG divisions in Normandy, showing their squad loadouts, which differ quite a bit. One little thing of interest: In both divisions, some assistant platoon leaders and one rifleman in (basically) each squad is carrying a "French rifle". I believe that this is a translation error: The Germans sometimes referred to the FG42 as "F-Gewehr" in their reports and I think the Americans, not knowing this obscure gun, mistranslated it. I don't think I have ever seen the original docs th is was translated from and was never sure about how FG42s were issued. It seems like the FJG squad of the time had only 1 lmg instead of the 2 the standard ToE assumes, but one was replaced by an FG42. There also was one in the platoon and company HQ. In addition to that, 3rd FJG apparently reported quite a few MP43s even in Normandy.

This is offtopic, but a few things: The main reason for the invasion was hunting terrorists. The whole "democracy" thing was more of a propaganda slogan. It should be noted that there wasn't a single election in Afghanistan without massive manipulation. The Mullahs remained largely in power and were able to forbid newspaper if they didn't conform to islamic ideology. Warlords and criminals were put into high office in the government. Not that this government had much power outside of Kabul, where much of the "aid money" directly went to various warlords. This kind of corruption delegitimized democracy in Afghanistan completely. BTW according to Human Rights watch only a third of girls actually went to school during the occupation. The USA alone put 1 billion into the country, although only 2% of that actually went to the afghan population, not the US Army, rich Afghans abroad or warlords.

Oh, they understood the reasons all right: Making rich people richer.