Centurian52

I recall ISW pointing out a couple months ago that while the US is the largest single doner (and Ukraine does desperately need the US to resume donating), Europe overall has donated more than the US. I think it was something like $160-$170 billion.

Yes, I did take a look at the other links. The part of my point that is in question here is "The overall trend so far appears to be towards greater democratization". And I stand by that. I don't think a 20 year decline constitutes a trend in democratization any more than a one year decline represents a trend in the stock market. When you zoom out the overall trend is still clearly upwards.

And a quick follow up with an article talking about the recent dip in democratization.: https://ourworldindata.org/less-democratic This bit seems to be the core of what the article is saying. I've added some bold.

Alright, I had to restart my browser in order to open these links for some reason. I'm not seeing the downward lines you're referring to. In fact these all look pretty darn upwards to me. We are in the middle of a dip starting ~15 years ago. But dips and rises are pretty normal on any graph, and I don't think there's any reason to think that this one is any more significant than the dips in democratization at the end of the 19th century, in the 20s-40s, or in the 60s and 70s (anyone living in the 20s-40s with access to a similar graph really would have had good reason to be pessimistic about the future of democracy). My guess is that it'll continue going down for another decade or two and then either level off or start rising again, just like the last three dips. Let's check back on this in 20 years.

In the Operations Room video? Yeah, I suppose it does look a bit like Armored Brigade. Both The Operations Room and Armored Brigade use 2d maps with a similar balance of detail/abstraction and what looks to me like a similar art style. But I doubt they're actually using AB to generate their maps. The locations depicted in most Operations Room videos aren't present in any of the stock AB maps. So that would mean they would have to be creating custom AB maps for each video. Possible, but it's probably easier to just use a dedicated graphics program at that point.

I remain optimistic. Regardless of how fast our genes are evolving, I think our memes are evolving plenty fast enough to allow us to tackle the challenges ahead. I'll say nothing further on evolution, except to recommend A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived, by Adam Rutherford (I just finished the audiobook, narrated by Adam Rutherford, on my commutes to work). It gives an excellent overview of the current state of the field of human genomics. He explains things in a way that is easy to understand, without falling into the all too common trap of oversimplifying things to the point of being misleading.

I'm not disconnecting physiological and psychological evolution. We aren't changing biologically on politically relevant timescales. The biological changes that can be traced to within the last 10,000 years are minor and have no way of effecting which political systems would work (I don't think the ability to digest milk as an adult has much effect on the efficacy of democracy). Where did you hear that our brains have gotten smaller within the last 10,000 years? I have heard that homo-sapien brains are probably smaller than homo-neanderthalensis brains. But Neandertals died out 30,000 years ago. Homo-sapiens haven't visibly changed in the last 100,000 years. As to social evolution, that's the same as technological development. We are developing better methods of organizing ourselves socially just as we develop better tools for any other task. It has nothing to do with biological evolution. I'll admit that social evolution does behave a bit like biological evolution. Ideas go through a similar natural selection process as genes. This is actually why the word "meme" was coined. A meme is an idea that undergoes a natural selection process similar to a gene. An important difference is that memes evolve far more rapidly than genes.

I'm always a bit concerned whenever I see any of my friends online advocating "tearing it all down". They never have any suggestions about what to replace it with. And anything you could replace it with would either be worse, or mostly the same but for a few modifications. The system as it is actually has the framework of a pretty good system. It just needs some tweaking. Rather that screaming into the void about tearing it all down, I think we'd do ourselves a lot more good by having constructive arguments over which tweaks would improve the system. I'd avoid using terms like "evolution" and "species". There is evidence that our species has evolved measurably in the recent past (as in "within the last 10,000 years"). The most notable sign of recent evolution being the evolution of lactase persistence in European populations (clearly a post-agriculture development, probably as a reaction to dairy farming). But there is no evidence at all that our psychology has evolved since the rise of the first civilizations (about 6,000 years ago) in a way that would have any influence on which political systems would be most effective. It's our systems that are changing to better suite the brains we have. It isn't our brains changing to allow us to use better systems. We are certainly still evolving. But the timescales involved are so long compared to the timescales on which we refine our political systems that it just isn't relevant. I actually think the jury is in. Loads of countries other than the US are democracies. It's obvious at this point that there are much better implementations of democracy than the US system (downsides of being first). But almost universally, people living in democracies (including the US) are better off than people living in autocracies. Democracies do collapse and revert to autocracies (and it feels like the US is currently skirting the danger zone on that). But autocracies also collapse and become democracies. And so far it appears that autocracies collapse at a higher rate than democracies. The overall trend so far appears to be towards greater democratization.

I do think the Battle of Bure is worth covering if any scenario designers are up to it. The British had a relatively small part to play in the Battle of the Bulge. But some of the fighting they were involved in, such as Bure, was pretty interesting. It doesn't strictly speaking fall into the Downfall timeframe. But it does fall into the wider CMFB timeframe, and requires assets that only became available in CMFB with the addition of the Downfall module. Here's The Operations Room's video on the battle:

I can see that being a bit of an issue in some circumstances

The formations aren't parade-ground rigid. Intervals and alignment are flexible in order to take advantage of the terrain. But they do fight in formations, of which a literal line is one (in fact it is the default formation for engaging an enemy to your front). The best you can do to mimic squad formations in Combat Mission is to break the squad into teams and arrange those teams into a line, column, or wedge (there are never enough teams to form a diamond unfortunately). A better representation of formations is on my wishlist for future improvements to Combat Mission.

I don't know. Perhaps not. My reading of "what battles were left out" was "what battles that have not already been covered can be covered now that Downfall has provided more resources". But I don't know how other people will read it.

I think this thread still has the potential to go somewhere. Provided that everyone can remember to avoid further personal attacks and insults. I think there is value in having a thread dedicated to discussing what we'd like some of the scenario designers out there to tackle. Give it one more chance.

I'd say it's worth playing both against a human opponent and against the AI. The human opponent is more reactive and challenging. But you can get in more turns a day against the AI. I think the only way to learn the game is precisely the same way you learn anything else. You put lots of time into it. Of course one additional thing you can do is to supplement your gameplay by studying tactics. I made a post that I thought offered some decent tactical advice a while back: If you're really crazy you can even go directly to the doctrine manuals. For WW2 doctrine I usually go to the Nafziger collection: https://nafzigercollection.com/product/american-tank-company-tactics-fm-17-32/ https://nafzigercollection.com/product/us-armored-infantry-battalion-fm-17-42/ https://nafzigercollection.com/product/british-and-commonwealth-armored-tactics-in-wwii/ https://nafzigercollection.com/product/british-and-commonwealth-motorized-infantry-tactics-in-wwii/ https://nafzigercollection.com/product/employment-of-tanks-with-infantry-fm-17-36/ https://nafzigercollection.com/product/german-panzer-tactics-in-world-war-ii-combat-tactics-of-german-armored-units-from-section-to-regiment/ https://nafzigercollection.com/product/soviet-armored-tactics-in-world-war-ii-the-tactics-of-the-armored-units-of-the-red-army-from-individual-vehicles-to-battalions-according-to-the-combat-regulations-of-february-1944/ https://nafzigercollection.com/product/soviet-infantry-tactics-in-world-war-ii/ I'd recommend FM 100-2-1 for Cold War/modern Soviet/Russian doctrine. And FM 71-1 or FM 71-2 for Cold War/modern US doctrine.

Honestly if I'm in a halftrack I think I'd actually be more concerned about early-war ATRs than the HEAT projectors of the mid-late war. I've found that while ATRs really struggle to be effective against tanks, even in the early war, they are far more effective against halftracks. The post-penetration effects of ATRs are usually underwhelming compared to HEAT warheads and ATGs. But against a halftrack stuffed full of infantry you can't miss. Each shot can't help but inflict several casualties. Each shot may not be as lethal as a single HEAT warhead, but they come on a lot more rapidly, a lot more accurately, and at much greater range. ATRs are still crap against tanks. But they work very well against halftracks and armored cars.

That's uncalled for

Now that we have British forces let's not forget that going back to the original CMFB timeframe to cover some of the British actions during the Battle of the Bulge is also a possibility. Bure is surely worth making into a scenario (unless someone already has and I've missed it).

The game UI doesn't tell us what a vehicle's ground pressure is. Perhaps this is part of what is indicated by the "Off-Road" meter? He did say that weight made no difference (given the same "Off-Road" rating and means of movement), which struck me as odd. But it might make sense if the ground pressure is already accounted for in the "Off-Road" meter. That was my interpretation as well. I assume when he said that the "order given" made no impact he meant whether you gave it a slow, move, quick, or fast order.

AR has been on a roll with helpful Combat Mission tips videos. His latest one is one bogging, so I think a link to it belongs in this thread.

Of course just deleting FoW wouldn't be entirely satisfactory. Overhead concealment still works on drones. And you can shoot down drones with small-arms fire, or disable them with EW, which may temporarily blind the enemy in a section of the battlefield (they would have a new drone up before too long, but it may buy you some breathing room). Part of the point of a new modern warfare game would be to try to figure out how you could actually operate on the modern battlefield, and part of that is figuring out how to counter drones. So the drones themselves would need to be included in the game.

That does seem the be the biggest unanticipated change in modern warfare, yes. And as a direct result of the omnipresence of drones. They aren't calling it "the transparent battlefield" for nothing. It seems to be a reversal of what happened at the end of the 19th century/beginning of the 20th century. At that time the adoption of dull uniforms, more dispersed formations which made greater use of cover and concealment, and smokeless powder firearms (which both extended firing ranges and reducing firing signatures) were all contributing to make it harder and harder to see the enemy and conduct effective reconnaissance. The result was the emergence of "the invisible battlefield".

I've noticed that in CMFI on-map US M7 Priests are generally not available for FOs to call in for indirect fire. Perhaps Wespes in CMBN have a similar issue? I don't know if there's a reason for this or if it's a bug. Perhaps @BFCElvis might know the answer? I can see this being intentional. It used to be the case that CM maps were always so small that there wouldn't be any point in trying to use on-map SP artillery for indirect fire anyway. There simply wouldn't be enough room for the shot's trajectory to arc and get over all the obstacles that would inevitably be in the way of the target. So if you had any on-map SP artillery, there may have been an assumption that you would always use it in a direct-fire role. But as the game has evolved and maps have gotten larger there are now instances where it may very well be practical to call in on-map SP artillery as indirect fire.

I did that a LOT when I moved back into WW2 after spending a while in the modern era. Definitely need to be thinking in terms of larger "danger close" distances in WW2.

I don't think it's possible to give modern warfare an honest portrayal without drone spam. Though I suppose it depends to a certain extent on how many drones are required to constitute a "spam". Based on the Russo-Ukraine war I'd think that one drone active at any given time in support of each platoon would be about the norm. Possibly going up to one per squad in the near future. So that would be 3 to 9 drones in a company sized engagement. 9 to 27 drones in a battalion sized engagement. That's just the quadcopters providing small-unit situational awareness though. Once you start accounting for loitering munitions the number would get higher, but at that point they're basically functioning like cheaper precision munitions.

I can definitely see why so many people are so enthusiastic for Swingfire. I hope they can figure out how to get it working with a remote operator in-game. Seems like it might require a bit of extra coding. But hopefully not a prohibitive amount of coding.