Monty's Mighty Moustache

It's getting complicated.
 

It would be difficult to find a part of the front that is more distant on exterior lines from where the big fight is likely to be and it's being done in a way that Russia, caught up in the coils of its own propaganda, cannot ignore. Somebody in Kyiv decided to demonstrate the concept of initiative in the most humiliating way possible for Moscow.

I would say do it straight away, you’ll quickly find the limitations of the AI frustrating. It can make for a good fight if they scenario designer is really good but even then it can only react so much to trigger points.
Playing against a human you will learn very quickly, and if you ask around you will find there are folk who will gladly hold your hand through it and provide feedback on what you’re doing as you play. Have a look around the Discord servers and the Few Good Men website and you’ll find plenty of people to play with. 

Ok let’s play “How Many Reasons Why Russia May Open Up Negotiations That Are Not An Immediate Sign Of Defeat” - all the College Boys chime in.  I will start:
- Shifting the strategic narrative/reframe the war in an attempt to demonstrate that they are the reasonable ones and start down a road to victimology that may appeal to certain political parties in the west who have their heads in warm dark places while they listen to “experts” with big mics, empty heads and a serious lust for more money and power.
- To create uncertainty in the European alliance and NATO as some nations just want this to be over and renormalize. 
- A ploy to pull China into this in some sort diplomatic tag team. China enters the side of “Putin the Reasonable” and leverages it towards a win for them both.
- The Russians simply stall for time in a hope to slow down the UA in a hope for a battlefield reverse.
- To play up to a domestic audience, with never any real intention of ceasing the conflict.
- Because Putin is finished and we wind up negotiating with a bunch of separate goons, none of whom actually represent the Russian people.
- Putin is not finished but wants us to believe it and over reach.  Link to playing for time and dumber political machines moving into power.
- Random irrational objectives that we can only guess at.
Now just for you - go look up Dunning-Kruger and think about it for awhile. And did you just walk into Steve’s house and tell him to shut up and sit down?  Seriously, how does that get right on any political spectrum?  And we are at Ignore.

This guy has written UKR troops inside Bakhmut received an order to withdraw from last position "Plane" in the city. Similar posts or hints about this I have seen on some other accounts
Prigozhyn claims he will begin withdrawal of PMC Wagner from frontline for R&R  from 25th of May. Part of most experienced merceneries will be moved to Sudan. In Ukraine in semi-seriously / semi-jokingly discussed theme that after the war we can establish own PMC, which will be moved to Africa to chase and destroy Wagners and Russian influence in Africa   

You realize that this sentiment is really the problem, right?  I mean there is nothing categorically wrong in what the ambassador said for an objective point of view.  Russia has not demonstrated that it will act in good faith during the conduct of this war - the systemic warcrimes are a big hint.  So it would be a very good idea to approach any peace negotiations very carefully.
You do not have to like someone nor agree with their politics, but that does not automatically mean everything they say is incorrect.  Statements or positions need to be weighed against the facts, not affiliations, no matter which end of the spectrum the come from.  
There are exceptions of course, for example if someone has demonstrated habitual lunacy or use of mis/dis-information, sure go ahead and burn them as a source, but the Ukrainian ambassador does not fall into that category as far as we know - unless you have proof beyond her possible post-secondary education?  You are burning her based in affiliation alone or at least it appears that way, and that is intellectually lazy to be blunt.
Finally this whole line of thinking is a significant fracture point that has, and will be exploited by all sorts of players.  It is in fact step 2 in the subversive warfare playbook - widen the fractures that were already there and make them unsealable; the death of compromise.  Step 3 is to harden elements from either side of the fracture into organized and connected collectives that are able to self perpetuate and metastasize - a carcinogenic operation. This is a long standing recipe on how to destroy a society from the inside out.
This is exactly the type of operations Russia did before 2014, and was attempting before this war started.  Every nation that borders Russia is combating this sort of influence.  And it will very likely be what Russia falls back on once this war is over - assuming there is a functioning Russia left.  China is also very good at this game, it is also out of their playbook, but they are much better at it.
So you do not have to agree with the current US president - and sure go ahead and insult him based on ageism. But it is hard to disagree with the results in Ukraine, so far.  This has been one helluva tough one to steer through from a strategic and political level.  And it has not been perfect.  But for navigation through the first real proxy war of the 21st century I gotta give it a B+ so far.
As to the rest of the politics, well you Americans can go argue that - preferably on another thread.

I half expected to see "grain elevator" and "tractor factory" indicated on the map

As we sit and wait for the Ukrainians to kick off their offensive, I am reminded of how Miyomoto Musashi handled a couple duels... he would arrive very late, letting his opponent stew and really mess with their heads.  Could this be what is happening here? I don't think you can discount it, the Russians have to be pissing themselves with anticipation right now.
Bil

Hi All, 
First post here, I'm a 44-year gamer who plays a bit of everything but my main interest is anything WW2. I've been playing Gary Grigbsy War in the East, Steel Division, Panzer Corp, Hell Let Loose, and pretty much anything related to WW2.
Took me until 2 weeks ago to actually hear about Combat Mission (probably did but never took note). I took the plunge and picked up Battle for Normandy and have already clocked up 120 hours and barely seemed to have scratched the surface. 
I am so amazed at how low profile this game is considering how addictive and rewarding it appears. I am already installing mods and now pay little interest in graphics, UI, and presentation. It really takes me back to a golden age when you actually bought a good game, book, or film and indulged yourself in it, and keep going back to it! 

The difference between these two images fills me with hope for the future of Ukraine after this war.

Kalibres launched from the sea, first explosions in (over) Mykolaiv. Air raid alarm in Kyiv again. Hm... Will Russians repeat combined strike? Well, I go to sleep. Wish good hunting to our AD. 

Keep safe, mate. Katsaps get crazy with missiles again, debris reportedly fell somwhere near central Kyiv in zoo area. Let's hope some idiot will not post AA stations again online.

Fu...k!!!! Sh...t!!! Damn!!! What a hell I just heard at 3:00 of night?! 22 loud explosions not far from of us! And about dozen distant boo-boom... Sh...t!!! Reportedly series of Kinzhals on Kyiv, also there were reports about Kalibrs launches. Well, I want to read good news at the morning

Let's calm down a little, shall we?
This unpleasant "discussion" made me dig out a test I did some time ago. I've been doing data analysis for basically all my professional life, so I always suffer a bit when reading these threads. So, as we've been discussing on page one or so, anecdotal evidence ("here look at this battle, spotting is broken!!!!") is meaningless. But also doing "experiments" is only as good as the experiment itself plus the evaluation afterwards. First of all, if you do experiments, control the variables! Eliminate everything you are not directly interested in. If you want to look at spotting, do it on a flat surface and make both opponents hold fire. Because, as I often see, if you measure time until first shot, or kill, you are skewing the spotting process. Next, don't look at averages or medians alone. Look at distributions. And don't eliminate outliers. My text book about statistical data analysis said that, eliminating outliers, although done often, should really only be done if you know what you are doing, e.g. when you know that your outlier is actually some measurement error and not some rare event.
So, here's what I did:
I put an M60 TTS and a bog standard T72 (the exact models aren't relevant for the method) on a flat map with paved ground, roughly 2 km apart. I set both vehicles to hold fire. I then measured the time it took for each tank to first get a partial contact and then a full contact.
Here is the raw data:
t72 = [84, 17, 78, 4, 174, 65, 77, 321, 289, 444, 31, 3, 290, 2, 40, 120, 40, 159, 57, 69, 15, 54, 80, 95, 19, 58,
       23, 672, 154, 154, 17, 14, 342, 12, 386, 43, 84, 12, 378, 123, 30, 44, 240, 311, 110, 2, 68, 181, 137]
t72_id = [7, 21, 7,28, 7, 35, 14, 0, 56, 0, 35, 0, 7, 70, 42, 7, 35, 35, 0, 49, 0, 7, 0, 0, 0, 63, 28, 7, 14, 0,
          7, 7, 7, 49, 7, 21, 14, 21, 14, 0, 7, 14, 28, 0, 14, 7, 28, 56, 77]
m60 = [89, 68, 41, 38, 71, 10, 73, 0, 20, 9, 4, 55, 91, 34, 31, 8, 14, 116, 64, 4, 18, 63, 116, 38, 3, 18, 71, 132,
       39, 73, 43, 73, 116, 210, 207, 36, 180, 27, 88, 48, 102, 3, 52, 77, 176, 22, 18, 80, 24]
m60_id = [7, 7, 7, 0, 14, 14, 0, 14, 14, 7, 14, 0, 7, 14, 35, 14, 7, 0, 7, 14, 7, 0, 14, 7, 7, 7, 14, 35, 7, 0, 7, 0,
          0, 7, 0, 7, 14, 14, 7, 7, 7, 0, 7, 0, 0, 7, 21, 7, 7]
Times are in seconds, the entry t72 is time until partial contact for the T72 trying to spot the M60, the one with  "_id" is the difference between partial and full contact. The same for m60. And in order to get the distributions I made histograms with 30s bins for plots 1 and 3 and 7s for plot 2.



So, what do we see here? Well, first of all, I should have taken at least ten times the data or make make larger bins. I didn't have the patience for the former and doing the latter would mean that we don't see much of a distribution. 😉 Anyway, from the raw data we see: time until partial contact can be any number, time to ID (which is what I call time to go from partial to full contact) is always a multiple of 7.
The histograms tell us the following: Although it is not possible to get the exact distribution, this is definitely not something symmetrical where average or media are easy to interpret. If you look at the bins with the highest counts, those are at low times. That means, players will usually see that their T72 or M60 are often quick to spot their target. Nothing to complain about or make a forum "rant". But for both (!) tanks it is quite possible that it takes several minutes - more likely for the T72 but also the M60 TTS had an event with over 3.5 minutes. The time until partial contact is consistent (no more, no less) with an exponential decay which you would expect when counting the number of dice rolls necessary to roll a specific number - only that the M60 TTS rolls with a D6, while the T72 rolls a D20, so to speak.
Now, is spotting "broken" or not? For me, this is really not a meaningful thing to say. Because by "broken" people usually mean "takes too long" without saying what "too long" is and why. With the above distributions, it is possible to never spot the target. Right? Wrong? Broken? This is a game/simulation and as any such thing, at least if you want it to run in reasonable time on a consumer machine, it is simpler than real life and abstracted. A meaningful discussion would be "Is this spotting model adequate? Could CM do better by applying model XYZ, instead?". I'm not sure if the long tails (what some call "outliers") are working as intended (although I find @The_Capt analogy with the barrel quite convincing) or if it is a model that is just designed to get the "center", the common situations, right, accepting that every now and then it produces something odd. But getting the tails of an exponentially decaying distribution right is brutally difficult - in fact, come to think of it, my whole PhD thesis was about modelling the tails of a similar distribution correctly.
 

The One Hundred and Seventeenth Minute
KG Leino -  Die Mitte
The infantry are FINALLY getting mounted up. Only 4 minutes to go though so unless there is extra time I highly doubt they will be able to do much of anything.

T2 continues to pull back...

..and my hopes of re-crewing THQ are dashed when the T-34 puts another round into her and brews her up.

My first full armour loss of the battle. Not gonna lie, it stings.
KG Perala - das Rechts
Go-time. T1 and the StuG are in position.

T1 lets fly at the T-34's last known position...

...and quickly gets some return fire that kills the driver and destroys the engine. She's immobilised.

The T-34 is spotted...

...by the StuG! He takes carfeul aim...

...let's an AP shell fly at a range of about 350m...

...and destroys it with the first shot.

The infantry are bussed forward.

They dismount just out of range of prying eyes (and guns). 

SITMAP

THQ is now dead and T1 is immobilized. RIP. Blood board updated along with the loss of his 4th T-34.

The plan worked but I did get T1 immobilised. The good news is that it is within range of the buildings on the objective so I'll be saturating the area with fire to cover the advancing infantry. The StuG is going to move up to support the assault slightly now that tank is dead, but I am wary of there being more. He has 6 remaining by my count and I know where 4 of them are, here's hoping there aren't another 2 sitting on the objective.
In the centre if all I can do is keep his T-34 there then I'll be happy as I don't want him to turn that thing around and then attack my assaulting force in the flank so I'll be pressing T2 ahead to see if they can get a spot on that T-34.
Nothing happened on the left.
MMM

The One Hundred and Fifteenth and One Hundred and Sixteenth Minutes
KG Leino -  Die Mitte
The 251/17 continues to provide covering fire as the infantry disengage. It's taking far too long but they do have quite a bit of forest to work through.

They eventually get out into open ground.

Just as their ride arrives.

Up ahead the Tigers are bounding ahead, THQ on the left, T2 on the right.

THQ pulls up as he spots some infantry heading this way, so my oppo clearly knows I'm coming,

THQ lets the infantry know he's spotted them.

Some casualties are inflicted.

He gets an armour contact...

...just before a shell slams into the weapon mount knocking out the MG and causing some subsystem damage.

Followed quickly by another that partially penetrates the front hull and incapacitates the driver.

The tank is still operational but the crew are panicked and bail out. Firing on those infantry seems to have allowed his T-34 to get the spot, they never did spot their assailant.

T2 is also spotted it seems as it also loses it's driver, this time the crew are OK and pop smoke and reverse.

The dismounted THQ crew finally spot the T-34 up ahead.

KG Koskela - die Links
Nothing happens on the left, I can't see him pushing from the strong position he has in the woods and I don't have enough combat power to make him abandon that position. I also don't think he'll try advancing on SCHWARZ again, but he may. Until something happens though I'm going to stop reporting on this KG.
KG Perala - das Rechts
Everyone is moving into position to start the assault on GRAU.


The plan for the T-34 is to area fire its last known location with the Tiger to try and draw its fire...

...hopefully allowing the StuG to get the spot and knock it out. Risky but the Tiger has more chance of surviving a hit than the StuG does.

SITMAP

THQ is not dead so I just hope I can remount the crew once they have regathered themselves. Next turn we'll start poking the T-34 at GRAU and see what happens while the infantry continue to probe the right flank. I do fear I've left this all a bit too late.
I think I'm done on the left, I have possession of SCHWARZ and don't think I can get to BLAU but I will keep probing with the infantry to see what shakes out.
MMM

The Kremlin are now saying it was a Ukrainian attack on Putin himself
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-65471904
MMM

Of course they are, and it is the official residence, but looks more like a symbolic demonstration to me. I doubt Putin sleeps right under the flag in the dome. Also, a highly demonstrative attack that seems to maximize visibility and minimize damage also raises the possibility of a false flag op.

Russia already did this from 2014-2022 and the sky did not fall.  They are very likely to be complete a@@holes no matter how this thing goes.  What I disagree with is the idea that Russia is somehow going to be willing to sustain complete Western isolation and grinding losses for the next century.  There is a lot of "Forever Russian Bear" myths floating around and this just feeds into them and gives Russia far too much credit and stamina.  It also runs paradoxical to other narratives of "backward Russians who wont do anything so long as they are fed vodka and propaganda", because decades of a slow burning war is a lot of "something".
"It's up to the loser to decide when a war ends"...nonsense.  Gulf War One, Korea, WW1, all of these were ended when both sides decided to quit, not the "loser".  Gulf War, US coalition decided to stop at Iraqi border.  Korea, both sides decided to sign the cease-fire.  WWI, Allies did not invade into Germany for a full occupation driven victory.  The loser decides when to stop resisting and the winner has to decide when to stop winning.   The history of warfare is full of examples where the winner went "good enough" and tied the thing off.  And plenty where the loser refused to quit and slowly petered out until they wasted away and were unable to continue - like the entirety of indigenous resistance in NA.
What Russia doesn't have to do is normalize with the West, this is not the same as negotiation.  We will very likely arm the ever living daylights out of Ukraine after this war and invest very heavily in its reconstruction.  One thing that has stuck in my throat since this whole thing began is a myth that the West is somehow weak and barely holding on against the might of an unassailable Russia.  "Russia will win this in a matter of weeks" (they did not), "Russian mass will eventually wear Ukraine out" (it did not), "Russia has escalation dominance" (they did not, we did), "Russia will decide when this war is over." no they won't all sides will have to decide that.  We could be fighting a containment and compression war against Russia for years and based on how the last one of those went I would be very concerned to be Russian right now. 

some comedians become politicians and then have to lead their nation in a fight for survival, wait what?  😎

I am looking forward to the photos and videos of a Ukrainian farmer pulling a T-14 with his tractor!

The One Hundred and Seventeenth Minute
KG Leino -  Die Mitte
The infantry are FINALLY getting mounted up. Only 4 minutes to go though so unless there is extra time I highly doubt they will be able to do much of anything.

T2 continues to pull back...

..and my hopes of re-crewing THQ are dashed when the T-34 puts another round into her and brews her up.

My first full armour loss of the battle. Not gonna lie, it stings.
KG Perala - das Rechts
Go-time. T1 and the StuG are in position.

T1 lets fly at the T-34's last known position...

...and quickly gets some return fire that kills the driver and destroys the engine. She's immobilised.

The T-34 is spotted...

...by the StuG! He takes carfeul aim...

...let's an AP shell fly at a range of about 350m...

...and destroys it with the first shot.

The infantry are bussed forward.

They dismount just out of range of prying eyes (and guns). 

SITMAP

THQ is now dead and T1 is immobilized. RIP. Blood board updated along with the loss of his 4th T-34.

The plan worked but I did get T1 immobilised. The good news is that it is within range of the buildings on the objective so I'll be saturating the area with fire to cover the advancing infantry. The StuG is going to move up to support the assault slightly now that tank is dead, but I am wary of there being more. He has 6 remaining by my count and I know where 4 of them are, here's hoping there aren't another 2 sitting on the objective.
In the centre if all I can do is keep his T-34 there then I'll be happy as I don't want him to turn that thing around and then attack my assaulting force in the flank so I'll be pressing T2 ahead to see if they can get a spot on that T-34.
Nothing happened on the left.
MMM

The One Hundred and Seventeenth Minute
KG Leino -  Die Mitte
The infantry are FINALLY getting mounted up. Only 4 minutes to go though so unless there is extra time I highly doubt they will be able to do much of anything.

T2 continues to pull back...

..and my hopes of re-crewing THQ are dashed when the T-34 puts another round into her and brews her up.

My first full armour loss of the battle. Not gonna lie, it stings.
KG Perala - das Rechts
Go-time. T1 and the StuG are in position.

T1 lets fly at the T-34's last known position...

...and quickly gets some return fire that kills the driver and destroys the engine. She's immobilised.

The T-34 is spotted...

...by the StuG! He takes carfeul aim...

...let's an AP shell fly at a range of about 350m...

...and destroys it with the first shot.

The infantry are bussed forward.

They dismount just out of range of prying eyes (and guns). 

SITMAP

THQ is now dead and T1 is immobilized. RIP. Blood board updated along with the loss of his 4th T-34.

The plan worked but I did get T1 immobilised. The good news is that it is within range of the buildings on the objective so I'll be saturating the area with fire to cover the advancing infantry. The StuG is going to move up to support the assault slightly now that tank is dead, but I am wary of there being more. He has 6 remaining by my count and I know where 4 of them are, here's hoping there aren't another 2 sitting on the objective.
In the centre if all I can do is keep his T-34 there then I'll be happy as I don't want him to turn that thing around and then attack my assaulting force in the flank so I'll be pressing T2 ahead to see if they can get a spot on that T-34.
Nothing happened on the left.
MMM

Also, of course there's an RNG aspect to spotting - that's how spotting has been modelled since there have been models for spotting.

As the basic example, Koopman in Search and Screening (1946), who theorised that the detection rate is proportional to the solid angle subtended at the point of observation of the target.
Since your chances of finding something is going to be harder the larger an area you're looking at, that's a base-e relationship of some kind. The Koopman probability of a detection in time t is P(t) = 1 - e^(-yt), with your y in Koopman theory being y=kh/r^3, h and r describing the height and distance to the target, and k being a value for how complex the search operation is.

Call that a "dice roll" if you like, but that's how modelling this kind of thing usually goes.