Bulletpoint

There is a fallacy that I think it would be helpful for people to understand for this discussion. Unfortunately logicians (really all academics) prior to the 21st century had an unhealthy obsession with Latin, so it goes by the difficult to pronounce (and harder to remember) name "Tu Quoque", which apparently translates as "you also". This fallacy is committed anytime someone asserts "they broke the rules, therefore I am allowed to break the rules". If you want a more memorable name, I believe people started calling this "Whataboutism" sometime within the last decade or so. 
https://www.palomar.edu/users/bthompson/Tu Quoque.html
The rules being broken does not invalidate the rules. Because Hamas broke the rules does not give the IDF, or anyone else, license to break the rules. If the question is "is the IDF following the rules", it is entirely irrelevant to reply with a list of all the rules Hamas has broken. We all know that Hamas has broken the rules. But how is that relevant to whether or not the IDF has broken the rules? 
There is no grading on a curve. It is not necessary, or even relevant, to ask which side was worse when considering whether or not one side conducted their actions legally.

We all know the fundamental weakness of Phil's stuff… While it is graphically on-par (and even better) with BFC official production, it doesn't (and it cannot !) feature the proper TOE and weapons characteristics of the portrayed eras/theaters. And it is by no mean Phil's fault: we cannot mod these critical aspects. I hope we could.

To me it rather shows that some people here would apprisiate if Steve could spend a fraction of his 'free time' that he spends in the ukraine thread to instead communicate with the community on other topics...
Surely answering a few questions would not require a monumental effort on his part...'working' or not. 
IMO that would be a sign of goodwill and respect towards his customers..
 
 

That is why that sort of logic is factored out of international law.  People in a democracy who support poor government decisions end up paying for it in the end.  However, there are no provisions in international law to punish them directly with violence.  In fact that would be extremely corrosive to the promotion of democracy worldwide - why support a system whereby I can be killed for what my elected government does?  At least if we have a dictator, I have some excuse and perhaps they won’t bomb me.  
I have no doubt Hamas did/does have Palestinian support.  The problem now is that they are likely to get more support, not less.  Hamas may even be destroyed but there will be another organization that looks just like it coming after.  It will be dining out on this entire war for generations.  Israel is going to remain regionally isolated.  And at this rate may very well be globally isolated - a NK of the Middle East.  If the winds shift in the US, Israel could looking at a Syria in envy in a few years at the current trajectory.
To be brutally cynical, I think the pace and intensity of the IDF actions are less about Israeli national security at this point and more about Netanyahu and his administration trying to save their own @sses.  The security failure of 7 Oct was so egregious that there are people in positions of power that could be facing charges of criminal negligence.  Politically Netanyahu is so badly burned that his legacy is basically over.  But so long as they can show “progress” in Gaza there is a chance they can keep the whole goose from being cooked.  While I support the destruction of Hamas, Israeli security integrity and the use of military power under the definitions of international law to make those first two happen; I do not support violations of the LOAC in order to try and save an Israeli PM his job after he threw up all over himself.

That is an excellent article from Forbes.  Proportionally is a tricky and slippery concept.  It is also highly subjective.  For example, if an IDF CO has intel that a Hamas commander is in a building with civilians.  What is the real military advantage of taking out a Hamas commander and a few fighters?  Now if that same Hamas commander is in a C4ISR node within that building the equation changes.  If that C4ISR node is critical to Hamas’ rocket program it changes again.  There will be a point where taking out that entire building and accepting civilian casualties is a righteous (and legal) shoot.
My concern at this point is that is IDF appears to be taking out around 10-20 building per hour.  Hamas does not have that many high military value targets to begin with.  The idea that these are all righteous begins to strain with every passing day.  It brings into question whether Israel is applying the principle legally.

I may buy this for the Hamas fighters and some true supporters.  But I am sure the daily stream of bloody children being hauled into barely functioning ERs are not ready to “welcome martyrdom”.  Their parents don’t seem on board with the idea either.  We have roughly 2 million Palestinians in Gaza and high estimates had Hamas at around 40k - those ranks may have swelled as people get on board with self-defence angles (frankly if I was on the receiving end of what the IDF has been throwing and my family was being pushed into a smaller and smaller area along with the other 2 million, I would likely pick up a gun too).
Hamas is a very small minority.  Now it may have had broad public support but even active support of a terror group is not a capital crime.  I am pretty sure the vast majority of Palestinians want to live, and live better than they have.  What and how that could be is well beyond me.  My comments are directed at the IDFs prosecution of this war and the LOAC.  Regardless of cultural norms (and in reality they really are not that different) the LOAC applies.  
Like AQ and ISIL, Hamas needs to die.  To do that they need to be pulled from the people and their idea needs to die - that is how terror organizations are destroyed.  That is a long term campaign heavy on intelligence, inter-agency spaces and SOF military actions.  Doing it with a heavy conventional force is not the normal way to go about this.  Doing it through deliberate systemic destruction on civilian homes and infrastructure with the intent that they never come back is a war crime under international law.

It is one of the most often misused words, but I still think this definition holds true:
Terrorism is violence directed against random civilians in order to promote a religious or political cause.

I have been following this elsewhere and I did some digging today for some stats..
The number of attacks made by the IDF between October the 7th to November the 1st is reported at 12,000 individual targets.

That’s 24 days to unleash the equivalent of 25,000 tonnes

 
Or 500 targets a day…

 
Or slightly over 20 an hour

 
So now think about the ISR (Intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition, and reconnaissance) required to plan and carefully select each of those targets and the logistics behind the scenes to agree it is a valid target and provide notification (if done) to those living at the intended target area.

 
I have been concerned all along that there is no way in hell that with such a bombing campaign that it is being done in a careful manner that those supporting the IDF say it is done. I.e. We alert targets, we only hit valid military targets etc.…

 
The proof is in the sheer number of civilian deaths and the sheer wanton destruction of the whole of Gaza.

 
The IDF has pretty good ISR after all the area is slightly smaller than the size of the Isle of White but with a population density of roughly 21,000 people per square mile and an overall population of nearly 2 million people. Those people have no other place to go and the IDF control all the borders and sea and even in effect controls the crossing with Egypt as they have the right to stop it from opening and monitor everything using it.

 
Yet I seriously question that any military has enough ISR to accurately select and initiate attacks 20 every hour.

 So the following gives an idea of how it is being managed back at the IDF HQ
Some investigative work by Israeli citizens who are appalled at what is going on we are now getting an insight to what is really happening…

We are now finding out that to undertake such a feat the IDF are using AI and the parameters are not great…


 
Owen Jones is doing a good job of exposing this and he interviews an Israeli investigative journalist who has been working with IDF whistle blowers.

 
https://youtu.be/mIbxF7GXfHs?si=IDXi5eQpEMpyP8y7

 


The more detailed article he is talking about and published, worth reading in full I think to understand the AI generation of targets. https://www.972mag.com/mass-assassination-factory-israel-calculated-bombing-gaza/


 
Some of the key points if you don’t want to watch the interview or read the article written by an Israeli citizen.


 

 

 

 
 
There are 4 categories of target the first two are absolutely right and valid targets IMO. and the last two are IMO not valid targets and being used to collectively punish Gaza.


 

 
So these targets to be valid for the IDF could just be a junior member of Hamas living in the tower block, they might give an order to evacuate the tower block then they level it. For all the other families living in the Tower block it is Hamas fault because they had an apartment there. For people who could not flee as there is nowhere safe to go they end up dead and I would say that is not a valid target because it is more about collective punishment. If Russia targetted a tower accomedation block because 1 member of the Ukraine military lived in it, would we be happy with that?
Or a war crime....


 
 

You're welcome. I hope my fix does the trick.
I looked at the date and time last modified for the 18 *.wav files I edited. It took me a total of 15 minutes of my life to edit the files.
I guess BFC is just too busy to ever fix these pathetically simple things? Or a better question: Why did a CMSF "modern" crypto synch tone wav file get used for a WW2 game? 
EDIT: ok, there is always a chance I missed a BFC patch that did solve this. If so, I would retract my previous whine.

 

That is my sense as well.  It is not carpet bombing but the effect is the same.  A strategy could be to do so much infra damage as to make the area effectively uninhabitable.  The cost of reconstruction for these urban areas is going to be enormous and Israel is definitely not going to do it. 
The psychology of suicide actions is fascinating, and I believe entirely human.  There are arguments that whales and some other species do it but  these look more accidental than deliberate (post here please if you know of an example in the animal world).  Suicide is of course an extreme irrationality when done outside of mental health or dilemma crisis (eg people who jump from burning buildings).  Suicide bombers have no possible way of benefiting from the action or even knowing if it really is going to be successful.  What they do have is fiction frameworks.  Humans can make stuff up and believe it so hard that we are able to effectively “remember the future”.  So a suicide bomber believes in an afterlife or believes that it will somehow achieve something from which they will benefit.  Failing that they believe that who they leave behind will benefit.
Now for an individual or small groups these actions are still manageable.  But for an entire state to effectively commit suicide is rare.  A lot of states will do “hopeless” or “slightly less than zero chances” because we can convince ourselves of things through a drug called “hope”.  But what is happening in reaction to Oct 7th was almost a certainty,  Hamas knew they and Gaza itself was dead once they attacked.  But they were willing to believe so hard, hate so hard that somehow this action would make things better…even if they would never see it.  You cannot really negotiate with that.  
Israel has taken the gloves off and this looks more like a ghetto cleaning everyday.  As I said wars come in arguably 5 basic strategies: intimidation, subversion, annihilation, exhaustion and extermination.  That last one is a blast from the past - Genghis type stuff.  Without being inside the IDF command loop and seeing what the plan actually is, it is very hard to make a full determination.  But the results do point to an ethnic cleaning or at least give rise to it being a possibility.  Next question will be whether it was deliberate or simply was self-defence that “got out of hand”?
Either way, Israel’s high ground is slipping away as we watch Palestinian children being killed daily.  I honestly don’t think they care about “narratives” at this point but they do need to start thinking about how they plan to live in this world afterwards.  Right now they are making Assad look rational, which is pretty nuts.

There was an analysis of open source satellite imagery recently that showed that IDF damaged or destroyed about 56,000 buildings in Gaza during the first part of the invasion (before the temporary ceasefire).
Even if each of those strikes had only eliminated one single Hamas militant, there would be no Hamas left by now. But there are definitely still many of them. So it doesn't seem IDF is too concerned about where they strike or how many civilian casualties they cause.
In fact, there was an Israeli journalist who recently did a story on how the Israeli intelligence service is not even able to "produce" enough targets based on credible info in order to order in those numbers of strikes a day. So the intel they base their strikes seems to be quite extremely patchy.
I'm still wondering if the real aim of this war is to expel the civilian population from Gaza.

If it's this guy, then I think you're selling him a bit short
https://militaryhallofhonor.com/honoree-record.php?id=216819
Do you know if he was of Danish descent? His name sounds like it.

Now I'm worried

Well, first of all, in response to the activation of enemy troops along the entire front line, we do not see any adequate and decisive actions from our military and civilian leadership. Only increased internecine squabbling. Zelensky seems to have decided to replace the chief of the general staff. I fully support this decision, because all responsibility for the failure of the Ukrainian military campaign in 2023 lies entirely on the shoulders of the General Staff, which was unable to adequately assess the enemy’s forces and capabilities and develop the correct strategy.
Replacing Zaluzhny would be a good signal that the leadership of our country is ready to adequately and decisively respond to military failures at the front. But instead, Zelensky started a real drama with intrigue and gossip, which provoked a split in Ukrainian society, which is intensifying every day. 
As a result, against the backdrop of complications at the front, we have a difficult situation in the rear with thousands of Ukrainians almost ready to throw themselves at each other in defense of their favorite political figures.

1. Increasing Russian attacks on almost all sectors of the front.
2. Political crisis in the Ukrainian government with a real prospect of a rebellion against Zelensky.
Already now one can observe the gradual abandonment of positions by the Ukrainian military near Bakhmut, near Liman and near Avdiivka.

Just to put a quantitative point on it, Steve has posted around 65 times in the last week in the Ukraine thread.  He's averaging about 10 posts a day in a topic that right now has nothing to do with the game.  And no where else in at least a month, and maybe more.  Its his company and his time to do with what he likes.  But based on some of the counterpoints that communicating with people is exhausting, he either is doing heavy doses of uppers or he is completely exhausted.
BFC has gone through this before.  Back when CMSF 1 came out and was almost a disaster of a CM product for the first few months, Steve was spending all of his posting energy for weeks at a time prolifically debating the concept of the Stryker brigade in one thread.  It finally hit a point where enough established players were vocally walking away that he shifted his comms from his Stryker tirades to addressing game issues.

Exactly.  Right now, this company has a distinct 'boys club' vibe, at the expense of the product itself.

Its only exhausting if don't like doing it.  There are people that are happy to communicate with people all day and some of them are good at it.  Steve obviously loves it based on how often he posts in the Ukraine thread.  I would think taking half of his posting in that thread and focusing it on updating customers and prospects would be a good reinvestment.

That is a deeply unfair and frankly insulting post. You are talking about a man who is living inside Ukraine and who bases his pessimistic view on his assesment of war weariness level of the ordinary Ukrainians. Something you by definition would not know about, and the Western press would not report about - not newsworthy enough. Frankly, In this forum on this subject only the opinion of Haiduk and Zeleban matters, as they are the only ones who can take a measure of that metric. And you are saying that Zeleban thinks that people he meets every day are losing the will to fight not because he sees the symptoms of that, but because he has been "inadvertently convinced by Russian propaganda"? What hubris!
Shame on you.  

Nice tantrum, not to mention an absurd caricature of my many posts, and of my overall outlook on the war.  I'm going to take the rest of this pissing match into a quote bubble, so folks can flick by it.
The Ignore key is over there.

@acrashb
You're making the same fundamental mistake that Trump did in viewing Defence as a pure cost-centre.
The US accrues massive collateral benefits from its outsized defence spending. Yes, that comes with expectations which mightn't seem 'fair'.

Super emotional appeal of the Ukrainian military to the Ukrainian people. In this address, he reproaches the Ukrainian people for completely forgetting about the massacres in Bucha and Izyum and that sooner or later these events will repeat again. He's not even going to say anything about power. Since the authorities have already ruined everything that is possible and all hope remains only with the people. Then he says that with such an attitude towards this war of the people as we have now, we will lose this war and the price of this defeat will be the lives of our children. Then he complains that the number of donations for the troops is very small, that soldiers collect for a month or even two months for drones and cars. He also reproaches that everyone in the rear is now concerned with preparing for the New Year holidays and not with the difficult situation at the front. He then states that at the beginning of the war we were indeed a nation, but now we are no longer a nation, we have turned into ordinary cattle. 
As we see, the situation in the rear is beginning to affect the soldiers at the front

2. The situation began to escalate for the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the area of the city of Bakhmut, where it is obvious that the enemy command is implementing the plan to enter the flank and rear of our group, which is conducting combat operations south of the city. In practice it looks like this...
- in the direction Bakhmut - Ivanovo, units of the 4th separate motorized rifle brigade of the 2nd army corps of the enemy attacked the forward positions of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, achieved partial success - they ousted Ukrainian troops from one of the positions
- In the direction Bakhmut - Kleshcheevka and Zaitsevo - Kleshcheevka (that is, north and east of the settlement) units of the same 4th Motorized Rifle Brigade + separate units of the enemy’s 88th Motorized Motorized Rifle Brigade attacked - they were also able to achieve success, ousting our troops from five positions
- But the actions of enemy airborne troops to the west and north-west of the city look most threatening. In particular, the 331st Parachute Regiment of the 98th Airborne Division of the enemy managed to dislodge Ukrainian Armed Forces units north of the village of Bogdanovka from one platoon strong point (VOP) and two positions, and the 217th PDP of the same division drove out our units immediately from six positions north of the village of Khromovo.
Thus, it becomes obvious that the enemy is trying to break through between the villages of Bogdanovka and the village of Khromovo into the tactical depth of the defense of the Ukrainian troops towards the town of Chasov Yar using units and subunits of the 98th Airborne Division, in order to create a real flank threat from the north to our units and subdivisions that operate in the area of the villages of Ivanovskoye and the village of Kleshcheevka...
Moreover, the enemy is quite actively counterattacking directly south of Bakhmut. At least the enemy’s 4th and 88th Infantry Motorized Rifles, as well as his 83rd Separate Air Assault Brigade, which is tirelessly trying to push our units away from the village of Kurdyumovka north towards Andreevka (so far, however, to no avail).. They are clearly acting in concert with the Russian paratroopers, who are trying to advance from the villages of Berkhovka and the villages of Yagodnoye.
In fact, we are now seeing how the plan of the OSV "Khortitsa" (in the zone of the OSV "Soledar") to "bypass Bakhmut from the south" is beginning to fail...
Therefore, it is worth reminding all those who, a month or a half ago, “squealing,” prematurely shouted on YouTube, on television and other “publics” that “we are about to bypass Bakhmut from the south” and that we are “about” to break through to the automobile roads Bakhmut - Gorlovka and that “Bakhmut is shot through and through”... according to a very good Ukrainian proverb “don’t tell the gop until you jump over”, you should never wishful thinking.
Therefore, in a general sense, I look at what is now unfolding in the Bakhmut area, let’s say, without much optimism... unlike those who are already “bringing Bakhmut back again.”
And we have not yet “deepened” into the situation in the Avdeevka area, where also... events are obviously beginning to acquire a rather “acute” character. But more on that another time...

I COULD HAVE SWORN IT WAS FIXED. I reported this a long time ago. But if it was fixed and back on again in this patch I hope nothing else followed it becoming un-patched again Yikes!
 
 

I know i'm negative...i'm sorry i just cant help it. I've grown seriously dissapointed in BFC in recent years.
The talk about resources...I don't buy that. Lack of resources when it comes to productivity...maybe...but lack of resources when it comes to
information sharing and development discussions with the community...NO ! That has nothing to do with lack of resources.
How many man hours could it possibly take to share some simple progress reports, future idea sharing/discussion etc ? maybe ones a month or something like that...or perhaps ones every second month.
Let's exagerate some...
Let's say it takes a full working day to produce such a report and to answer some follow on questions.
With one update every second month that would mean 6 days lost of development time each year...Considdering how long it takes BFC to release any new product...
nobody...NOBODY ! would notice any difference AT ALL ! if some of BFCs products took 6 more days or something like that before release.
To claim that is utterly riddiculous.
But then again...If you have nothing to share....You have nothing to share...But according to BFC they are indeed working on many things...