hattori

That's an easy one. As your tone increases in a dismissive and increasingly insulting tone, so does mine. Especially given that you are customer support, I find how you speak to others on this forum who disagree with you very surprising at times. I almost feel an obligation to speak up at times because you will hammer people relentlessly who disagree with you until they are bullied into submission. For example, it is probably not appropriate for an admin to say these things: or I'm not even going to get into how you speak to Vlad. That man has the patience of a saint. Ya, pretty much. I didn't want your response the first time I talked about this, and I really had zero interest in discussing it with you, but you are incapable of not responding. Feel free to assume I don't want you to comment on any of my posts. For example, after this comment: I don't think I'm really asking for a discussion from you here. I don't think I'm asking for a discussion with you here either. I'm really sure I don't want a discussion by this point. Guess what? Battlefront is a still a tiny company. Perhaps it's handling of customers could use some work.

But my poor pixelTruppen. I feel so personally responsible each time I accidentally send some to their doom

Right on schedule lol. You talk to me as if I have no appreciation of these things -- I would have thought by now it would be clearly obvious I have worked in software development. At what point did I ever say I wanted this now, or it had to be done? Never. I'm pretty sure I have made frequent comments appreciating the devs are likely overloaded with stuff. Did I give a suggestion to throw in the queue (because a LOT of people have talked about this before I said a word), and some ideas how to implement it? Yup. I seriously laughed out loud at this one, I was going to say it to you. It's pretty obvious you don't read my comments. I think you skim them, and already have some predetermined ideas you're going to oppose whatever I have to say, and look for some angle where you can argue with me. Since you are so free with advice, I will give you some as a business owner through my own hard experience. Dismiss and talk down to your customers at your own peril. Your choice though.

While I understand you cannot resist disagreeing with me on virtually every post, this is becoming comical. So we already have a 'split scout team' function, 'split squad', 'split anti tank', but for some reason, a 'split commander' method would totally ruin this game and is a crazy corner case that is a totally unreasonable request. Okay then lol.

A corner case is something that happens outside of normal operating procedures. It seems that this issue is big enough now that most of us who play as the Russians (and read this forum) split off scout teams or buy sniper teams to correct an obvious flaw in Russian doctrine with our own tactics. (maybe the Russian army would benefit from playing Black Sea, you should see if you can hook up a bulk 'training' purchase from them ) Exactly! That is what the players were asking for! They want to adapt their tactics to have better spotting, and are asking for a means to do this. Perhaps you guys should just overhaul the squad splitting code to be completely customizable, instead of a few fixed choices. To save it from being a real nightmare, you can limit the number of teams a squad can split into to 2. I personally don't think it's the craziest thing for infantry units in real life on the ground on their own initiative to say, "hey, lets have someone stay in the BMP to have more eyes on over watch". In the meantime, I will enjoy my mobile Russian death coffins

lol, I am aware of this. If you read the comment in context, it was that Battlefront is not above hacking things to make game play (and their coding load) easier for all of us. I do get disagreeing with me is fun though Adding a "Split leader" function as you suggested is also another workaround I would be happy with. I was just putting suggestions that I thought might be easiest for you guys to do, since there are only 2 coders.

Battlefront kind of hacked the loading of Bradleys to fit into their program without major overhauls. They could also do a hackish solution and just put a crew member in the vehicle in that position to do the spotting, or turn on some boolean flag to tell the engine to treat all the BMPs as if they had a commander in that position for spotting, even when empty. No idea how they've coded it, that just sounds easiest if they want to address it. The sniper team, or splitting off a scout team works, but is kind of ridiculous in my opinion. Even if it's not totally accurate, I would prefer a hacked in commander for the vehicle. That sounds more realistic than buying and assigning multiple sniper teams to every single mech platoon.

Thanks :|

Wow, they certainly have their hands on some impressive research material. I swear the eastern front has an infinite number of stories, there seems to always be new things to learn, new accounts to hear.

I saw this on the wiki article about Battlefront: "On July 1, 2010, battlefront hired Phillip Culliton as a "First Second Programmer" after operating for 13 years with a single coder. " ONE coder and now TWO? I'm going to cut Battlefront a ton of slack, and I'm now more impressed with the work they have done.

lol, no need, we sell it all to the U.S. anyways.

In fairness to Russia, this is because they are ridiculously dependent on oil. 70% of their exports and over half their GDP is oil. The price has gone from $145 a barrel to $30. They have been hammered by the Saudi's deciding to drive the price of oil down in late 2014. This is almost a repeat of the 80s. In the 70s, oil prices were really high, and the Russian economy masked a lot of weaknesses with this oil money -- things like a growing enormous black market most people were taking part in. Then the price of oil collapsed in the 80s, and the Russian economy got wrecked. The old soviet style "communist" economy couldn't handle that kind of shock, and it was totally over exposed with military spending, no computer industry, and embroiled in foreign conflicts. Fortunately for the Russians now, their economy can handle it better now, but it's not something they can keep up forever.

I think in the long game, Russia's economy can't compete with the West's. I think they are going to wreck their country in the long run if they try to keep playing this game at this level of commitment. The cost is insane. America can get away with the level of funding they spend on the military because their economy is so big, their currency so wide spread, there are ... different economic rules when it comes to the American economy and everyone else. They could borrow money to keep it up infinitely longer than the Russians can. I get that being a world power and not being as ... respected as much anymore is really tough to deal with, but I think this militaristic play in the long run is going to do them far more damage. Each dollar they spend on these adventures is a dollar less of investment in their people or infrastructure. I think China is much smarter buying soft power through infrastructure around the world, and making a real push to wean themselves off oil. It's annoying to me that China is now likely a world leader in green energy tech, or quickly headed in that direction.

For sure. At the end of the day, they or their proxy pulled the trigger, they are the ones (in my opinion) that should apologize and pay damages (although that is impossible, no country is ever going to fully pay for collateral damages, most of our countries would go bankrupt if that were the case). Whoever put the plane in that area in the first place -- well, if there is a law covering that type of negligence, I would definitely prosecute. go 'noles!

Perhaps I just pay too much attention. I would think if modern APCs and tanks are being used in the battle area, there is likely to be some pretty advanced air defense systems to go along with them. Especially given that area already has a lot of advanced equipment and people who know how to use it. It's pretty obvious this is important enough to Russia they are not just going to sit idly by and let the rebels get creamed because they don't have modern gear. Are you seriously going to tell me you would have put your own family on a plane the month before MH17 if you knew it was going to fly through that air space? At the macro level, Russia isn't bound to tell us any of that stuff. America sure isn't telling me what various groups it is giving AA weapons to. It would be nice if they told us, but the precedent has been set. If I knowingly fly over a war zone and get shot down, I'm going to curse my own stupidity. It sure isn't my fault I got shot down, but I was aware of the risk and put myself in that situation. Sorry, just can't personally let the airline completely off the hook for that one, they are responsible for your safety while you are on their plane.

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply I think the rebels and Russia have no responsibility. Their weapon, their control, they pulled the trigger. If it was a court of law, I see them as more negligent (manslaughter) over murder 1. This is the side effect of war. Innocent people are going to get killed and it sucks. I do think Korea and Japan are different as I have flown through Narita and Incheon International a few times. While tensions are high, no one on either side is expecting an airstrike, so I would guess they are not in the same frame of mind of shoot first, ask questions later. Also, unless you are flying to Pyongyang, NO flight goes directly over NK airspace. I personally think you would have to be crazy to take a flight that was flying over Syrian airspace right now myself. I looked at a few flight paths and from what I saw it seems most avoid Syria and prefer to fly over Iraq and Iran instead. I still think it is coming close to criminal negligence to have flown MH17 over a war zone in order to save fuel costs.

I do own a business :| There are taking business risks, then there are immoral risks someone at a desk makes to get their yearly bonus. I myself could completely degrade the safety of our equipment to increase margins, very easily. I could really bring things right to safety edge where 99.9% of the time things will be great and make the company even more profitable. In my personal opinion, that is reprehensible, and exactly why businesses cannot be allowed to regulate themselves. I don't know too many cases where industry self regulation didn't end up harming the consumer. We're businesses! We have completely different priorities than a real person does. People will always pick doing things and cutting corners to get their salaries, keep their jobs, and pay for their families food, even if you are potentially putting others at risk.

Again, no expert, but I watched a bunch of the videos associated with the MH17 forensic evidence Duchess posted (they did a pretty thorough job it seems). There is an intercepted conversation from the commander in the area -- perhaps someone can tell me if that was a Russian soldier speaking or not -- on the 16th who is worried about his recon battalion getting hit by airstrikes from "sushkas" the next day and asks for a Buk to defend himself (which the evidence really seems to show came from inside Russia). MH17 went down on the 17th. This sounds a lot like a independent screw up on the ground by people expecting to see enemy aircraft coming their way, and I'm pretty sure it never occurred to them a non military plane was in the area. I also think all of Russia's actions after that were pure attempted damage control because they knew they royally screwed up and lost major global opinion points -- it became pretty impossible to deny Russian military aid after that in a lot of the general public's eye. I'm positive no one in Russia intended this to happen myself. From the great game perspective it makes no sense to do so. I also put a lot of blame on the flight planner. Who flies a commercial jet through a war zone? That's so stupid, what did they think would happen? Obviously a soldier could mistake you for something coming to kill him. I would be sickened if I found out it was a business decision to keep fuel costs to a minimum.

Thanks! Good counter points. Yes, I am painting too broad a brush, and pushing too hard in the other direction. There are definitely some good news work done in western media, you just have to be aware of their potential biases, something I feel a lot of people forget.

I must say, to me, this idea that causing less civilian casualties per strike because you used precision weapons is somehow more okay is farcically comical. This is just my personal opinion though, I'm positive others can rationalize it no problem. Western media while much better (sorry Vlad, your news media is ridiculous at times to an outsider) than Russian media, at the same time has a completely different set of biases -- their boss is the dollar. It is views and clicks that drive which stories will be covered, and how much. The western media is a business, and needs to make money to keep running. There is a lot of competition in media now, and they are desperate for your business. You may have heard of our infamous mayor in Toronto, Rob Ford? (our Donald Trump lite) Just like Trump, he said stuff that was controversial, spoke his mind when he was angry about something, but was completely lacking any real substance, and clearly had done no research on ANY of the issues effecting this city. However, he generated a TON of views and clicks, which generate a ton of coverage and articles on him, which after a while, weirdly make him seem like a 'real' candidate who might actually have a clue how to run a city, despite all evidence to the contrary. If you were pissed off in life, chances are you voted for him. It is especially noticeable in American news sources -- I have given up on most being credible and non-biased. The majority now pander to their viewership -- for example, fox clearly goes after right wingers. All their news articles, guests, everything, cater to this crowd. Then you get all the left wing media who is clearly selling to their following. It is fascinating sometimes to see how a news story is covered differently on Fox, CNN, and MSNBC. Western media is also very lazy now (well, really, budget constraints, they're not going to pay to have reporters everywhere). You will also frequently get regurgitated news if you trace it back comes from just one source, yet appears in the news to be widely covered by a variety of sources. Anyways, I will always take our western media, but I do know we have to take it with a grain of salt, and try ourselves to get a variety of sources within our own media. Sometimes you even need to listen to foreign news to try and get a more detached perspective.

Thanks for the info! I'm sorry to hear about the woman. I honestly mean this, one thing I have learned in life, as much as it hurts now and you might not believe me today, but I promise you there are a TON of other women out there for you, who you will find absolutely amazing, and vice versa. Seriously man. Just stay positive.

Very interested to see how this turns out. It may have also been interesting to go 100% infantry in this urban environment. Your opponent might have run out of ammunition taking your forces out of every single building, especially if he spends a lot of points on APS Abrams.

@Sublime You play with the Russians a ton, I figured you would also have some good input on this.

I think everyone understands all war movies are like this, not just Soviet. Pretty much all American war movies are propaganda pieces, and the latest, "Fury" made me want to cry. I'm no soldier, and even I can see how terribly that one was done.