Douglas Ruddd

Sorry to hear that.

Having lived in Korea...eh.  The government is so in the pocket of those businesses I think you'd be hard pressed to see a shift left to a meaningful degree.  And the nationalism of South Koreans (Koreans in general!) is something to behold.  
 
And you're really underestimating how BAD DPRK is these days.  It's not simply a matter of giving them several dozen Type 98s, and some rations and you're good to go.  The primary use of many military formations is not training or even military tasks, but has been more or less turned over to fishing, harvest tasks, or mining.  Reports from defectors indicate that 10-20 rounds per soldier per year is the accepted training standard for rifle marksmenship, and much of the "advanced" gear claimed exists in a secure magic bunkers that their commanders swear exists hidden under the base that no one is allowed to see ever.  
 
You would really have to see a disastrous catastrophic fall with an equally meteoric rise from the North before you see anything sort of resembling parity.
 
When I was over there what we worried more about wasn't them coming down, it was the more likely possibility that we would have to go North.  There's no happy ending to a sudden collapse of the DPRK government, and the reality is someone would have to go in, secure the dangerous stuff like nuclear or chemical weapons sites, restore order, put down the various "True Korean Republic" or "Juche State of Joy and Love" fiefdoms set up by the various DPRK generals, and do it all in a country so improvised that simply dealing with all the disease and total lack of functional infrastructure was going to be a bigger roadblock to mission success than the former DPRK forces.  
 
Also just the reality of working with a population and infastructure so badly degraded and managed to be called maldeveloped vs underdeveloped.  There's virtually nothing remaining in terms of efficient or practical industry, and the people's education is amazingly poor which precludes a rapid handover of much of anything advanced.  Most estimates show that in the event of a ROK takeover, the best way to keep running the country would basically be the same, only without deathcamps for several years simply because it's too hard to change so much so fast, so it's going to have to run very badly for some years to avoid having everything just collapse into dark(er?) ages.  
 
This is really the question of what China would do comes in.  China hates the DPRK.  With a passion of a thousand suns.  However right now they're happier to have it contained and on a sort of leash than in a state of turmoil.  If the DPRK starts a war, China is almost certainly not coming in to help the DPRK (and depending on the circumstances may actually fight nominally allied to the ROK and US).  In a collapse situation thought it might be something modest, like invading in a few KM into the DPRK to secure a buffer zone, to a more ambitious plan to go all the way to Pyongyang while the US and ROK try to claw through the DMZ, install a recently discovered son of Kim Il-Sung who's shockingly pro-Chinese and call it good.  
 
China is pretty opaque about what it would do.  I think the  buffer state option is most likely though as it presents lowest risk to China, offers a high degree of control, but leaves the cost of putting North Korea back together again in the hands of the US and ROK.  

I am one of the ones who complained.  I came in one morning to look for a specific thread.  I found the first six threads started by John and another one only 8-9 down.  One was on emoticons, one was on some issue with sound on youtube, one was on a video of the T-90 which could have easily been just a post in several existing T-90 threads, one was on Grad rockets falling on a city in the Ukraine (which also could gone into an existing thread if it really was relevant), one on Russian field rations, one on a video of the XM25, and another on a training video that no one seems to where it's from, and one legacy one on the A-10 in US service.
 
So maybe 2 you could say were relevant.  Three are clearly not relevant, and a couple could have been just part of existing threads.  I have seen his behavior in other threads and the pattern is to spam the forum with so much stuff that finding anything useful about the actual game becomes difficult.  I don't mind the thread here and there about equipment or units in real life, but I have seen where this ends up.  I was just trying to point out that it would be nice to have the game forum have the majority of the posts about the actual game.
 
There is a general forum.  There are forums all over the web for this stuff.  I initially asked nicely to back off of some of that stuff.

There's this great subforum here called "General Discussion" if you want to discuss the merits of law enforcement. Please stop dragging this thread off-topic.

The T-90A in its current incarnation is...basically the ultimate T-72.  It is a good tank, compares well to many mid-90's tanks.  However:
 
1. It still has issues with the autoloader effectively limiting the length of main gun rounds which ensures it will have inferior conventional gun performance compared to similar western guns.
2. The armor array heavily leans on which ERA is equipped.  Newer ERA like Relikit or whatever it is still offers some good performance, but the majority of it is kontakt of various vintages, which largely has been surpassed by modern AT systems.  The base armor array under the ERA is not effective against most threat systems.
3. Russian optical systems are based on a French downgrade system.  This is not a positive sign. It also means while it has hypothetical stand-off capabilities with the through the gun ATGM, it will not be as able to leverage that range because it does not have the systems to readily acquire targets in battlefield conditions at that 4 KM+ distance.
4. As is common with Russian vehicles, it has packed a lot of stuff into a tight space.  Any penetration stands a fair chance at causing either loss of vehicle or at the least mission kill level damage.
5. While the commander has his own optic, it is not as capable as western CITV style systems.
6. As with most Russian vehicles, god help you if you're tall.  Even if  you're small crew comfort is limited, which detracts from being able to conduct long duration operations (such as the US march to Baghdad in 2003).  
 
To the positive end of things:
 
1. It is fairly cheap for what you get.  You should not expect it to perform miracles, but if you're India and you're staring down the finest Chinese export tanks from Pakistan, it is a very potent tank.
2. While it is not magically more reliable, it is however designed to be repaired and maintained by a much lower standard of maintenance.  This should not be confused with better readiness (see the various Arab military forces and how their Russian hardware is broken as often as the western stuff) but the "replace the whole unit and put in a new one" design is well suited to forces that lack a large pool of mechanics.
3. It is quite light for its performance, and its small size has its advantages.  While disastrous in a penetration, it does mean that it is a smaller target, and better able to cross bridges and somesuch.
4. It can hypothetically scale protection with ERA packages, which is to say unlike western tanks, which need depot level work at the least to upgrade their armor (see the M1A1 to M1A1HA conversions in Kuwait 1991 for a good example), mounting better ERA blocks is much easier as long as the blocks are similar to the previous generation.
5. Respectable firepower.  While it does not stack up to western MBTs, it does hold its own against peer tanks, and there isn't much short of a western MBT that it cannot defeat through firepower
 
It's not a bad tank, there's just a false understanding that it is a one for one peer for western tanks, when the reality is that the current generation of in-service T-90s lag somewhat behind the other top tier tanks.

Links to what? If you don't believe that an M1a2 SEP 2 isnt an overall superior tank to a t-90, then nothing I post will change your mind. If I was a T-90 crewman. I wouldnt be excited about attacking an M1a2 or Challenger.

It's an opinion and since they haven't foughy, anything anyone links to is the same. BElieve what you want

The M1/challenger/leapard 2 tanks were very innovative.

Do you think a russian tank crew receives the same training via simulator and operations against "professional OPFOR trained to mimic US tactics? That is unbelievably expensive. U.S. NCOs attend various schools from leadership academies to staff NCO academies. Nothing I have read would indicate that Russia is economicly capable of trainimg its tank crews to that level...not just the tank but operation with other arms.

I can't prove a negative or something that hasn't happened. My response was directed to the comment that the poster wished the T-90 could go up against the Leopard 2 to show its superior...I think that would get a lot of T-90 crews killed

If this game highlights anything, it is the ability of man portable weapons like the Javelin and others to turn these bad ass tanks into so much burning junk. Only countries with deep pockets and high industrial output would be able to sustain the high materiel losses that would occur in a showdown between two or more modern land armies.
 
Look at the 1973 battles beteween Israel, Egypt and Syria, or Gulf War 1 and 2. The destruction of armor and aircraft happened at high rates and very quickly. Hopefully we will never see large scale armored conflicts ever again.

Stagler,
 
So it really is a documentary? Are there more? If so, I'd love to see them. I was unsure, since I don't speak Russian, whether or not it was, but it sure looked like a documentary to me. Was very impressed, despite being able to pick up only the odd word here and there.  I noticed some BMD-4s were shown briefly, and at the very end,a BTR-82A.
 
I thought it was funny when they gave him some Mike Rowe ("Dirty Jobs") things to do like bore swabbing, tank washing and such, likely for humor. To say he wasn't a good fit for the tank is understating it considerably. Don't mind telling you I feared for the LWR when I saw him using it to support himself while the tank rolled and pitched on the move.
 
Speaking of movement, the amount of nose pitch, thus, the time to get the gun tube back down after firing could, based on what I saw, directly affect ROF. Granted, it's not like the automatic cycling of a T-62 gun to max elevation after firing, in order to reload, but the recoil forces appear to create something like that, though not as severe. By way of contrast, notice how little hull movement there is at all in the Abrams tanks firing here. I suspect a lot of what we're seeing is the sheer effect of all that extra mass that the T-90S doesn't have.
 

 
I was fascinated to watch all those men busily sewing on fresh collar liners, exactly as Suvorov/Rezun (T-55 company commander before going into intel) and other Russian veterans have described. Something else which really struck me is that nowhere can't I recall seeing so much as a single soldier smoking, even at chow. Has there been some sort of crackdown which prohibits smoking altogether, or is this MOD image management?
 
Badwolf66,
 
I can't speak for the rest of the people here (though I believe many will agree) that I deem what you said in your #4 to be extremely ill advised, thoughtless and uncool. To in essence say "I hope there's a war in which T-90s fight Leo 2s and win, just so it shuts up the Leo 2 fanboys" makes you look both heartless and clueless. Pixel war is one thing, the real kind, horrible beyond belief. Even for the winners. We have combat veterans here. They can tell you.
 
Kieme(ITA),
 
With you on that!
 
Regards,
 
John Kettler

The Armarta has a Terminator/Doctor Who feel to it and the side guns remind me of a Daleks plunger and gun.
is it only concept art or is it the actual tank?

Generally a lack of warfare is preferred in both polite, and professional circles.  
 
Re: Leo 2
 
I do hate the fan club.  It's a good tank.  Not even a "good" tank, nope, it's quite well designed and capable.  But it has this following wherein simply repeating Deutch qualitat at increasing volumes, and talking about German armor in World War Two is enough to prove the Leo 2 is the best tank to ever tank.  
 
Statement: "Best Tanks"
 
Entirely depends on who you are, and what you're doing, and what your military is capable of supporting.  The Abrams is awesome, but I wouldn't want to try to support an Abrams fleet as Columbia or something.  The Merkava is a great example of something that's very powerful in its niche, but pretty "eh" outside of it (granted, 100% it's going to do all its fighting in said niche, so that rather makes sense).   The more practical reality is if the Leo 2 was the M2A5 Leopard, and the M1 was the <insert german name here>, in the hands of similar personnel, the US Army wouldn't be stronger or weaker for having Leos, or the German Army much worse off for being M1 users (Green party objections to DU, and fuel consumption excepted)   

I would wager that most of those comments professing "worship" for a tank of all things are posted by 12 year olds.

I hope that T-90 will one day be able to prove itself in real tank to tank combat hopefully against the Leopard 2,
If the T-90 beats the Leopard 2 that will shut up the Leo Fanboys up for awhile.

I hope that T-90 will never be able to prove itself in a real tank to tank combat, because that will mean a war against a country operating that tank.

"Its alrigth honey, we can try it again later"

I have finally got some time to look into this. Despite being an uncooled device it is not clear to me that the TIM 5000 is necessarily less capable than the Catherine FC. It does have a lower resolution, but it sees further into the infrared spectrum than the Catherine FC and has a more powerful zoom.

Catherine FC
Spectral Band: 8-12 μm
Field of view (FOV):
Wide FOV : 9° x 6.7° Narrow FOV : 3° x 2.2° Electronic zoom (x2) : 1.5° x 1.1°
Image resolution: 754 x 576
 
TIM 1500
Spectral band: 7.5 - 14 mm
Format 640 x 480 28 mm pitch
Field of view (horizontal) Wide 10.1°; Narrow 3.3°
Electronic zoom 2x, 3x, 4x

Pnzrskrtwrfr,
If CM:BS were set in Montana following an invasion by Canada supported by North Korea, you might have a point. In that case, the US would probably throw everything including the kitchen sink into the fight, feeling they had no choice since they were about to be overwhelmed by crazed kimchi-wielding Canucks. Meanwhile, in this corner of the multi-verse, the US is not fighting for national survival, and can chose what assets to pitch into battle. And in this, or any other comparable optional fight against a first- or second-tier opponent, it is more than a little unlikely that they'd pitch in the A-10 when the USAF can instead use F-16s or -18s, or whatever, to deliver the same effects in safety.
 
The Ukraine and the USS.. er, Russia don't have the same choices.

Program an AI bot to go spread the word, you can do that in your spare time.

Haha. The 90s called, they asked if they could get any tips on game design from the future. I told them not to call here again it was a waste of time.

Its already been explained many times that BFC doesn't have the budget/time for these major changes like to the AI, Stagler you said you might be making 200,000$ soon, why not send that BFC's way?

What's that, sorry I missed it while googling "games that Stagler has designed". Try as I might I couldn't get any matches. Damn search engines are screwed up cause it is obvious you are cranking them out all the time.

Actually - the SU-25 is more maneuverable and faster than the A-10. The US air defense scheme is based upon establishing AIR SUPREMACY (claiming the air space with fighters) - the organic air defense support within US maneuver forces is laughable in comparison to the Russians. There are less threats to endanger the SU-25, and when they do, more opportunities to defend against them.
 
 
Ultimately it boils down to PLAUSIBLE DOCTRINAL DECISIONS. It's not plausible for US commanders to deploy A-10s against modern Russian forces. It is plausible for SU-25s to be deployed.

And know what it does with some level of credibility. I'm sure whatever armor it has according to the Russians can defeat smaller nuclear explosions and resist Captain America's sheild but combat mission thus far has well modeled what we know about vehicles vs propoganda claims.

Red Guards Bear Cavalry is vigilant and protecting secrets of Motherland Russia!  

Having carefully reviewed the entire thread, I can assure you that the reception which first your idea, then you after you repeatedly stepped in it here, has been restrained, gentle and polite. I say this as a veteran of myriad thread wars, some so vicious people have been banned, going back to January 2000. Since you invoked your MS, I should tell you we have a number of people here who are disabled or have major health issues. Indeed, for some, the CM Forums are their major connection to the outer world, for they're home ridden or even bedridden. I'm not supposed to be stressed myself, for I'm recovering from a brain injury and am on disability, but in your case, I think it fair to assert the stress you're feeling is self-inflicted. You may not have intended it, but you have, in fact, riled the troops. And to your evidently great discomfiture, they're expressing it strongly, yet courteously. In a sense, you have tracked mud into our living room--and now are defending having done it! Unsurprisingly, it's not going over well.
 
We welcome players of all ages and genders and are under no delusions whatsoever that we need to get some (not spill some; that's later and it'll be from pixels) fresh blood in here if our hobby cum obsession/E-crack is to survive. You may also be interested to know we have people here who play many popular games over and above the CM series. Contrary to what you might believe, this is not the Place Where Innovative Game Thinking Goes to Die™, but is a dynamic opinionated community which, if it could have thought controlled, 3-D, fully interactive Holo Cube displays using projectors the size of a quarter but creating a sim battle space, say, 100 x 100 km; with everything in it, including visible planes, horses, cows and motorcycles, perfectly rendered and functioning exactly as the real ones do--would be on that in about a nanosecond, particularly if it could be done for what our current CM rigs cost. Yet, you're essentially portraying us as using these and being unwilling to go beyond them. Not even remotely true!
 
Simply put, we welcome innovation here that improves combat sim fidelity and our gaming experience. We want to be able to do in CM everything those same units and weapons did and do in the real world. We are not there yet, and even if the coding resources were there, the computational horsepower simply isn't. As it stands, CM can't even take advantage of the widely proliferated multiple core systems, which inherently limits what can be done, since the game can use but one processor core, of n available. 
 
You seem to expect us to jump in and enthusiastically support your idea, but you don't have the perspective we have. Some of us have CM backgrounds going back to, I believe, 1998. What was true then, and still is now, is that BFC is a tiny and very busy firm. A firm with a whole two programmers who would have to devote a great deal of time and effort (and a substantial chunk of BFC's very scarce funding) to give you what you want, presuming it's even doable, at the direct expense of other important things which need doing, such as a Module for CMRT, which has none, and a whole Battle of the Bulge game, not to mention modeling of weapon depression and elevation limits, which we've been trying to get since CMx1"s CMBO, and CMBS's tactically significant and very galling inability to model mast mounted sights and weapons. You've been a member for a bit over two years, so you have no idea how thrilled we were when BFC announced it was hiring a (trumpets blare) second programmer. Before that, it was just Charles "Brain in a jar" Moylan, BFC's co-founder along with Steve, who was doing all the coding for all the CM games.
 
Having ideas is great, as is suggesting them. but how you go about presenting them, stating your case and asking for what you want is going to, for good or ill, have tremendous impact on what sort of response you get here, whether from the members, BFC or both. 
 
IanL,
 
Sadly, you probably could sell that to the networks. Might trigger a bidding war. Meanwhile, the basic concept's been done already. With a lower carbon footprint, too.
 

 
Regards,
 
John Kettler

If you want a test, use this test: I call it the Arthur Jensen test. It goes like this... 
 
 
You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations. There are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are no Arabs. There are no third worlds. There is no West. There is only one holistic system of systems, one vast and immane, interwoven, interacting, multivariate, multinational dominion of dollars. 
 
If you're an old man that thinks in terms of gaming features from the early 2000s and 1990s and refuse to innovate, then congrats, I just showed you the face of God.
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKkRDMil0bw