Bulletpoint

It depends on what ground conditions the designer has set for the battle. A patch of mud is traversible during dry times, but gets you stuck almost instantly in wet ground conditions. Looks exactly the same graphically though.

I guess it has to be true since it was posted by some random user on Twitter.

I know they are trying to take away the dollar as an instrument of US foreign policy - just musing about whether that would necessarily mean replacing it with China's own currency, or maybe a third-party currency (that they could somehow still control or influence).

WarTranslated seems to be a Ukrainian propaganda blog. Anyone got a link to the original post by that Russian propagandist? Because if even their propagandists have such a negative view on the war, then Russia has surely lost by now. Which is of course what a Ukrainian propagandist would want us to believe.

Maybe they don't want to replace the dollar with the renmimbi, but instead to make for example the Euro the new reserve currency? Even if they did, the European Union is still too weak and politically divided to ever become the kind of rival to China that the USA is. Or in other words: Pluck the feathers off the eagle and give them to the chicken.

Watching a video about how FPV drones are now mass-produced in their tens of thousands using 3D printing, how long before we see a head of state assassinated this way?

This is a very old issue, and the problem is that the game does not distinguish between different parts of each square as long as troops are moving. So there's no "run on this side of the wall".

Meanwhile, in America

I completely agree. And I think many people in Europe and the USA are now thinking: If those Russians are so stupid and incompetent, why haven't they lost yet? And why do we have to keep funding this war?

We are all subject to propaganda. Showing our own side winning. You got my respect by also showing when your side is losing, even though I am sure it feels terrible for you to see. That must hurt like hell. I salute you for that.

True, but to be critical of the propaganda of even your own side is rare. I appreciate your comments here.

Haiduk, I have so much respect for you because you are always balanced in your opinion and share even horrible videos showing your countrymen getting killed, no matter how bad it must feel. That's very unique. I hope the best for you and your country.

Ok, I haven't played the scenario. Just thinking about how it could be made into an interesting H2H game. I guess the Soviet player could agree to schedule all artillery as soon as it becomes available then, to represent rigid artillery doctrine and planning and to give the opponent a fighting chance.

I guess you'd have to agree beforehand that your opponent would have to put on his Soviet general's cap and get into the Russian Army mindset.. not trying too much to be clever. A bit of vodka might also help even the odds. Maybe also a houserule that all artillery had to be pre-planned and scheduled.

I believe the TO&E is just as comprehensive as in Combat Mission, if not more. But yes, CM has a much better editor, and it does small-scale tactical way better than Graviteam, in my opinion. Also, there's the whole multiplayer aspect, which is completely absent from Graviteam, but then on the other hand, it has persistent map damage and operations with repir and supply etc. Two quite different games.

I must say I disagree here. The amount of detail in Graviteam is incredible, and they just keep adding more and more. Just recently, they added simulation of exactly where each soldier gets hit by bullets and fragments. Some hits will kill immediately, some will wound, and some wounds will eventually kill - again depending on what part of the body gets hit. And just to take it to the almost silly levels: I suggested to the developer that Soviet molotov cocktails might in some cases fail to burst if they hit soft ground or deep snow, simply because the bottle won't break. To my surprise, they actually went ahead and used my suggestion and changed the game code to do this. Which is not only detail for the sake of detail - it means Soviet infantry is now less effective against infantry in snowy and muddy battles. One can definitely make an argument that Combat Mission is better as a game than Graviteam is, but I think it depends on one's preferences. Both are worth playing in my opinion. CM has micromanagement, turn replay and also better urban combat. But Graviteam has much more detail and work put in overall, as I see it.

You missed the point of my post. I am not saying there is some dark and secret conspiracy for a forever war in Ukraine. I am saying that I think Western leaders probably say quite different things in public than they say at high-level meetings. And they think different things than they say even there. That is not a conspiracy, that's politics. The goal is not to keep the war in Ukraine going forever. But the primary war aim is not that Ukraine wins this war or takes back all territory. That's also an aim, but it's secondary. I think that the reason we see so slow drip-feeing of assistance is that the primary Western goal is to avoid escalation, and not only on the battlefield, but also to avoid a chaotic collapse of Russia. The real goal would be to keep Russia intact but to effect regime change. And for that to happen, Russia has to be worn down, not crushed by a sudden shock on the battlefield. The average Russian has to be made well and truly sick of this war, and responsibility has to be eventually placed on Putin. I think that's the actual US (and therefore Nato) plan.

Because we (the ones in charge at least) don't really want Ukraine to win, at least not too much and too fast. So we are going to continue to drip-feed supplies little by little, just enough to keep them fighting.

Just to clarify, I definitely think it would be possible to use a limited number of tactical nuclear weapons to vapourise a section of the front big enough to drive through, but I do not think it would be viable for the current Russian Army to then exploit that breakthrough in any meaningful way. And I do not think Putin is desperate.

That was the important part

"This does not mean that such an assault is impossible. It simply means that it would require weapons on the battlefield we have yet to see. In my opinion, the only weapons that Russia has which could achieve this in this time frame would be a tactical nuclear weapon or some sort of chemical or biological attack". Funny how a guy who specialises in chemical and biological weapons predicts an attack by chemical or biological weapons. When you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail. I think he's either a Cold War fossil who is unable to realise that the world has changed since he was in the army in the 1980s, or maybe he's paid or instructed by someone to play scaremonger in order to put pressure on the Western public and politicians to provide more aid to Ukraine. Because his scenario seems to make no sense to me. His piece seems to rest on the assumption that just because some ultra-nationalists in Moscow want a grand offensive, Putin somehow has to deliver that. But Putin doesn't need to take the whole of Ukraine to declare victory. He just has to keep what he has taken. Also, Hamish de Bretton-Gordon seems to think that you could just use a couple of tactical nukes to "blow a hole" in the front line and then "exploit by mechanised formations". That's Cold War stuff and not how it works now in an age of ATGMs and drones everywhere. You don't just pop a small hole in the front and then race to Kyiv. Especially not now that Russia's mechanised formations have been ground down. If Putin wanted to use nukes, he would have to nuke the entire front line, burning up most of the Ukrainian Army. And even then, those Russian columns would get mauled by Nato conventional airstrikes inside Ukraine within a couple of days. And then what?

I think it's not really about whether we interfere directly, but that we stopped fearing nuclear escalation the moment the Ukrainian offensive failed. If Ukraine had been marching on Crimea by now, or seriously threatened the "republics", there would have been serious escalation fears.

I'm also a regular listener. Most of it seems valid enough, but they are definitely very pro-Ukraine, to the point of the presenters sometimes going on little anti-Russia rants or using heavy doses of sarcasm. I've begun to suspect the podcast series of being a "grey propaganda" channel. Not really lying, but presenting the news with a strong slant in order to promote one side's narrative. This would also help explain why they keep asking listeners to write in, with a special interest in finding out where people are listening from around the world. Adding to my suspicion, the Telegraph has a bit of a history of being paid to run propaganda, but it used to be for the other side - Russia, China, and others: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Daily_Telegraph#Accusation_of_news_coverage_influence_by_advertisers

I completely agree, and I'm not German.