Hapless
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Posts
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Posts posted by Hapless
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11 minutes ago, The_Capt said:
Back to my main question, how does one hide on the modern battlefield?
Maybe not too far to say you don't. Grossly simplified, but fighting takes place between EW-AD snowdomes: when a snowdome is pierced and collapses, the assets inside are quickly destroyed unless they can flee to another. We kinda already see that from an Air Force perspective (ie. SEAD -> DEAD -> Open Season), the prevalence of drone-artillery recon-strike is pretty much the same thing but for ground forces. Except with a crazy distributed OODA loop.
Then again, it's not like deception is dead. For all the talk of UGVs, I don't think anyone's mentioned their potential use as decoys yet. -
Don't think this has been linked yet. Couple of guys in a civilian vehicle, a drone and a radio:
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34 minutes ago, Probus said:
Loving the fuel tanks on the end of the mole there. Nothing to worry about there, seems a totally fine place to hand around unloading other combustibles.
It would be interesting to know what's going on in more detail though. There's a big difference between systemic incompetence and a Bluff Cove type confluence of unfortunate events. -
Remember when infantry became obsolete when the first caveman hit another with a rock?
Vulnerability doesn't make things obsolete guys, come on. -
ISW update it out: https://understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-march-20
The two stand out bits to me:
"The Ukrainian General Staff reported for the first time that the Kremlin is preparing its population for a “long war” in Ukraine and implementing increasingly draconian mobilization measures."
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"Russian forces face mounting casualties among officers and increasingly frequent desertion and insubordination."
I feel like those two things constitute a death spiral... -
Tanks. Or, a tank. Sorry for Reddit again.
What struck me most was the number of autoloader-ejected cases on the ground at both firing positions- they're clearly not playing shoot-and-scoot.
That's not necessarily an outright bad thing in the right environment, but it seems like a poor life choice what with the incoming at 1:02. Also looks like the first position is a prepared tank hole so maybe they're playing "Donbass Static" rules. -
Potential footage of it:
Never really got the hypersonic thing, but if we're going to see more gimmicky weapon systems maybe they'll roll an Armata out so the Ukrainians can blow it up.
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I guess it's a lot harder to launch a coup against someone sequestered in a nuclear bunker under the Urals.
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41 minutes ago, The_Capt said:
So the theories on what is happening to the Russian forces now are roughly assembling around 3 possibilities:
Possibility 4: peace talks are actually gaining traction. https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/us-warns-china-against-helping-russia-sanctions-mount-2022-03-15/
Assuming the aim of the Russian offensive is to prevent Ukraine from joining NATO, the abysmal showing of the Russian Armed Forces in the past couple of weeks may actually have encouraged the Ukrainians that NATO membership is either unnecessary or a ball that can be kicked down the road out of the immediate future.
Potentially, Zelensky could compromise of NATO membership (on the basis that it's not needed), giving Putin the successful result he needs to pull the plug without losing face. -
10 minutes ago, Battlefront.com said:
Here's his thinking [...]
Excessive casualties at the tactical level, grandiose operational planning but limited actual gains, no strategic endgame... is that the ghost of Ludendorff looming over the Russian General Staff like it's 1918?
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22 minutes ago, sburke said:
On 29 July, 33 alleged mercenaries from the Wagner Group, a Russian private military company, were arrested in a sanatorium near Minsk.
Somewhat off topic, but Bellingcat reckon it was a Ukrainian sting operation. Less kinetic than current events, but fascinating stuff. Says a lot about the Belarus-Russia relationship that they assumed they were there for a coup attempt.
https://www.bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-europe/2021/11/17/inside-wagnergate-ukraines-brazen-sting-operation-to-snare-russian-mercenaries/
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Pretty sure it's a tank. Once the fire starts going it looks like it illuminates the cheek ERA and the main gun.
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2 hours ago, MikeyD said:
I think at some point Ukraine is going to have to transition from knocking out tanks and Buk launchers from the air to going after rocket artillery. Each GRAD (or equivalent) knocked out is one less salvo of artillery rockets falling on population centers that evening. Its like fuel trucks. You knock out one, you knock out another, and another... eventually you start to make a dent in Russians' capabilities.
On other hand... rocket artillery ammunition is super bulky and a major logistics drag. If it takes one truck to reload a single Grad launcher every time it fires they need a lot of trucks to keep things going. So more trucks, more congestion, more maintenance stress, more targets and fewer trucks carting other things about.
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Loathe though I am to link anything from Reddit, I can't find this one anywhere else. Sorry in advance:
But, this appears to show SKIF in action- I didn't realise the launcher could be controlled remotely within 50m. That's got so many tactical ramifications.
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It's like choosing a unit- if the attacker chooses EW, it degrades the defender.
It also costs points in QBs. -
So changing it at Btn level alters the base vehicle type for the whole formation. The US vehicles can only bring Bradleys, but individual vehicles can have different bits stuck on (ERA and APS).
The Russians have different base vehicles, which you can only change at Btn level (BMP-2, BMP-2M and BMP-3), but only the BMP-3M has any sub-variants with addons that you can change at individual vehicle level (ARENA, ERA, Shtora). -
There were 27,000 Union troops at Franklin though, so a good example of how fast you can get fortifications up, but I'd say the scale is a little pre-modern for CM.
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20 minutes ago, dbsapp said:
If those videos teach us anything it's that "Soviet dictrine" in CM doesn't work.
Soviet doctrine may or may not work in CM, just like it may or may not work in real life... but like we go over in the video: I didn't actually use any, so the series doesn't say anything about it.
21 minutes ago, dbsapp said:Halpless virtually lost most of his tanks early in the game simply because they couldn't see enemy.
Hapless lost most of his tanks early because he did daft things with them. I did a whole video just about Turn 10, where I suffered the most casualties, and turns out while I was unlucky in the play-through the problem, the whole (avoidable!) situation was the bigger problem. There was also a crack M60 staring at a T62 at near point blank range for 40 seconds that never spotted it, so clearly M60s are blind too.
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Air Bursting High Explosive.
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So, something like this terrible paint mashup:
For x10 Magnification (I have no idea if that's correct for the M60A3 TTS), Laser Rangefinder and TI for Thermal Imager.
I'm not sure how much room there is in that segment in the modern titles when it's full of acronym soup (ERA, APS, LWS, etc) and it could get complicated fast when you take into account, for example, differences in magnification resolution or thermal imaging quality (ie. an M60's optic at 12x mag is likely to be less clear than an M1A2 SEP2's optic at 12x mag; and there are various generations (and resolutions) or thermal imagers). Maybe a traffic light system would work (red for poor, yellow for mediocre, green for good).
But I think it would be a super helpful addition, especially for new players. -
I used my Matrix account details.
This being the account I apparently made 6 years ago and completely forgotten about. -
2 hours ago, BFCElvis said:
It looks like Usually Hapless has his Steam copy
Yep. Looks like Slitherine have been handing them out.
Interested to see it in action. -
5 hours ago, kohlenklau said:
Can we get some mini campaigns?
CMFI, but Norway. Commando raid spread over 4 short, platoon-company sized fights. Another bit of a failing-forward test-bed, so rough around some edges.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/18nuw8jj8arwxe3/Raiding Party V0.2.cam?dl=0
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Well, if we're doing things we have up our sleeves I have a CMSF2 scenario kicking around from when I was trying to get my head around AI plans.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/vtjh74osfgj6obt/02 Where Angels Fear to Tread.btt?dl=0
How Hot is Ukraine Gonna Get?
in Combat Mission Black Sea
Posted
Not sure what's going on in this one, but I'm sure it's stupid:
Longer video towards the end of this https://www.seznamzpravy.cz/clanek/zahranicni-reportaz-z-prvni-linie-pohled-do-hlavni-domobrany-a-s-pistoli-proti-tanku-195688 Looks like they were getting an RPG-18 ready and then the guy in black decided to close assault it with a pistol.
On the one hand, seems easily staged. Dedicated cameraman, key character all in black so he's easily tracked, hard to tell exactly what's going on, BMP doesn't have it's engine running etc etc
On the other hand... apparently Russian basic tactical skills as demonstrated over the last month.