Captain_Colossus

the apparent lack of opsec protocols in an active warzone in the era of social media is surprising to me because no one really mentions it. drone operators for example disclosing theiir own approximate locations, the location snd disposition of their own side, ingress and egress routes as well as where they are searching for the other side whenever they upload their video, since generally voice comms are either secured or encoded- but not the twitter, tiktok or telegram video. in the past this kind of information may have signicantly lagged behind battlefield results so that any intelligence gathered by the other side would probably be untimely anyway, but in current wars anyone with an internet connection can follow along and assess where developments might occur

and so i think it all comes together as a whole. if you are not interested in the subject matter, the graphics will not really matter either. this video popped in my news feed of some new helicopter combat simulator using the older representation of late 1980s c:\ prompt technology when we might mess with autoexec.bat and config.sys files. i do not really understand why anyone would go back to this except out of a sense of nostalgia, since the environments are so artificial. you might get away with this with a flight simulator depicting operations in a desert environment, which is still a major concession to reality, but it works even less with ground based representations of anything. ground combat / tactical FPS ego shooters always trailed their flight sim peers in terms in results, since the technology was primitive but at least facilitated generating environments from empty sky more plausible than the information content necessary from a ground level perspective. i can find no examples prior to the late 1990s where this started coming together to produce more natural looking, functional environments. sometimes the original m1 tank platoon is held up as some kind of gold standard, but again, this was always a very primitive representation of armored combat with modern forces in europe in the 1980s because the technology was so bare. but it is all there was. cutting edge for its time, but i would never go back to that.

i think that a lot of games are just boring as hell whether they are visually attractive or not. i give the example of mechawarrior on the pc. all iterations of this game are boring to me. the gameplay remained the same boring, and shallow experience because the actual engine was so shallow- the combat is akin to repeating the same thing over and over again, circling an opponent at close range with the fire button held down until one of you dies first. usually killing the leg is is best way to achieve that. walk around the map, repeat this over and over. ironically the tabletop 2D sets have more drama with rolling dice than that. call of duty and those kinds of games- really just interactive movies on rails. over the years the graphics improve, but i wouldn't know because the very first one was boring. i honestly cannot understand what people get out of that. but people enjoy it, different strokes and this sort of thing. i think it is a misdiagnosis to say that graphics = bad for quality experience or something. i think there is a lot of a strange nostalgia effect and maybe some other kind of phenomenon where primitive games forced players to use their imaginations and maybe constructed or projected their imaginations onto them. As we go along, of course the new technology that people used to want eventually becomes familiar and it becomes not interesting as it once was. kids today are comfortable with and exposed to technologies that kids 40 years ago would have been astonished to see. but kids today aren't as impressed because it looks normal to them. there is a retro style that some developers have brought back -- essentially new simulator games using 1990s graphics, and i have no interest in returning to those. they were acceptable in the 1990s, but i have no interest in them now. in general that technology is obsolete not even from a graphics standpoint, but the standpoint of such primitive looking environments are limited in their function as well. i think also just as species we are becoming over-stimulated. all this stuff and technology and advertising if you are constantly plugged in to the internet, to television or to some kind of stimulation is doing something weird to attention spans. about a year and a half ago i saw some program which i knew was popular and i thought society had lost its mind. this is what i mean.

tattooed faces confers status in cultures we view as out of control. in the united states you can go to los angeles and see this. you do not want this if you do not want enlisted men dominating officers or just basically whoever is at the time the most of an orc, which does not last long. now go the other way. the civilized way. neurotic. way way too much estrogen and this sort of thing. sure

is there a path to change the AI instantaneously detecting anything shooting at it, that is, computer units know instantaneously that something is firing at it in the same instant the trigger is pulled- in the past when there were only two user tanks in steel beasts- the M1 and Leopard 2, this was not as apparent since the flight time of main gun rounds could close the distance fast enough to barely notice (users might understand this when in the gunner's position the TC always knew a rocket or missile projectile was on the way and would button the hatch and the sound cue was played). this really became apparent when the bradley became playable as well as the TOW missile complex in version 2.0 (i do not recall when the first russian or european ATGMs became available), because once the player pulled the trigger on an ATGM, you could visibly see the AI sense it immediately and begin searching for the source of the shot as if there were a direct link from the player to the enemy crew. if the enemy unit was not already preoccupied or engaged with something else, it has a decent chance to spot the missile source and return fire with enough distance, putting any kind of missile operator at a disadvantage and ambushes difficult to execute)

generally the temperature and exposure levels have been adjusted so that flames appear to be hotter or have more variation in temperature (the default file tends to use more yellow uniformly on the fringes in building flames and, gunfire and HE bursts, i have adjusted these to include cooler temperatures on the peripheral edges and more white hot at the center). i do not have video capture software though

a change of color and brightness exposure of the particles file, which is how the program renders burning flames, main gun effects, explosive bursts, munition impact effects

a particular angle might create the impression of a net draped over the vehicle say when viewed more or less perpendicular from the side or the top aspect, but the illusion becomes apparent when joining surfaces are viewed say from a shallow 20 degree angle- eg. the net doesnt appear to hang from the gun tube viewed from a side angle, or in a similar way if both the turret side and turret top are viewable at the same and the net is supposed to continue from one to the other- then it looks painted on, it creates a very 2D effect painted on 2D surfaces where it joins and transitions, it tends to look like a painted camo pattern baked into the skin rather than a net draped over it; it is relatively simple to photoshop a net mapped onto the skin, but in my experience, even photorealistic details of a net does not escape the problem that it looks unnatural viewed from certain perspectives. you may have seen very convincing urban street art painted into sidewalks or onto walls by graffiti artists giving the impression of depth when viewed straight on, such as a realistic looking swimming pool painted onto the pavement, but the illusion collapses once you begin to view it at acute angles ( in a similar way older graphics rendering techniques which mapped satellite images of cities and towns and installations onto the terrain produced a nice effect with distance and altitude, less so closer to ground level)

i grant you everything: uk intelligence about russia is wrong. do you see now the problem being repeated one way or another. the last operational ukrainian success occured in the fall of 2022. it has been ridulous ever since because western information sources seem to never get it right. yet after three major ukrainian losses somehow it is wrong again but only in a way that polishes a turd and: russia is fighting with shovels and microchips desoldered from washining machines and refrigerators. which is it - does ukraine need more weapons and ammunition or is russian flunking. you cannot have it both ways. you answer will be considered fairly

what is your source that it definitely isn't? uk intelligence gives this figure, sometimes carried by a few MSM outlets, defense journals, sometimes by more obscure sources, but it also comes from sources within russia and from asia which have given the same figure. i have watched a half dozen independent content creators showing the figures from the russian assembly line which claim similar figures while they show the assembly of the t-90s and t-72s and the factory bosses and workers. as far as re-fit and refurbishment of damaged tanks, i have no idea about that, and which is probably harder if not impossible figure to track- but it is probably unlikely that would account for such a round figure of ~100 per month, given the ebb and flow of actual tank operations (some weeks or months are relatively quiet, some much more intense), it does not make sense that it works out to consistently 3 per day or 100 per month are repaired and deployed again -- such a round figure suggests something different than that. to believe all of this is false would require that the UK analysis is also wrong- which might be true, but i have no reason to believe anyone planting false flags deliberately. if that were the case, how do you come up with a figure of 3- the russians might do better to exaggerate with a figure such as 10 per day or something, western sources might want to create the idea that russia has no capacity to produce any new vehicles at all. i am open to a different conclusion, but i do not think anyone is lying. if the russians are lying, then either the uk is also lying, or the uk is somehow believing in the lies that russia is feeding them. in which case, well, then you have no right to believe anything at all, in other words any sources you have refuting my source is also suspect and so that shuts down any and all discussion. but at least i explain my methodology. note: business insider is a very pro-ukrainian outlet. this article is relatively recent quoting UK sources when this figure was given even earlier last year https://uk.news.yahoo.com/russia-replacing-destroyed-tanks-rate-140105722.html

it has been established by now that russia is producing ~ 3 tanks per day, or about ~ 100 tanks per month of the most current t-80 and t-72/ t-90 models. this is sufficient for this war. there is no plan or need for russia to switch the production lines to a new tank at this stage even if it were suddenly revealed that russia had been testing for acceptance some new model under the table and were to reveal it now. tried and tested tanks for which there is an established knowledge base for operation, supply and maintenance and keep a steady flow to the front vs. some unknown quantity which the production lines are not geared to produce in sufficient numbers in a theatre where more than half of the year mechanized operations are hamstrung by mud season. the fact that there comes a point of diminishing returns for the investment put into a new design when in this war your challenger, m1 and leopard tanks are just as easily removed from the board with artillery, drone attacks, mines and long range ATGMs as a base model t-72. there is no advantage the former have over the latter there except perhaps in a duel situation- which is rare in this war as far as the source of the story, i poll as many different sources as possible and i keep an open mind given the state of the lamestream MSM, official press from any government and who knows what else (visit yahoo's homepage to see the abundance of clickbait articles from third rate news sources. when you click on them there are often inundated with sketchy ads and amateur looking web design)- although i do pay attention to those as well, then i can develop a picture from the aggregation of all sources, i make note of where they seem to agree or contradict one another and themselves , but it is the only way as far as i can tell to avoid being blinded by any single narrative but as stated above, this particular source says a lot without revealing anything

p-47 thunderbolt. bob semple. b-17 flying fortress. bob semple. ww II german elefant (elephant) - tank tank destroyer. bob semple. no need to go on- the former are vehicles considered ungainly (your own term). but compare that to bob semple. as the man said 'what is in a name' -- you are seeing it right now. the name matters. if you think this is superficial, i will refute this by saying that pschology or psy-ops or whatever you want to call it are as old as primate warfare, and intimidation whether real or perceived as been going on since some clever organisms started figuring out and developing the rules of the game and how it behaves

basic psychology at work. i did not invent it, but that is the way it is. fight it if you must, but you are not coming to grips with it. if it were named something else which sounded menacing, it would have a different idea in the minds of people. any mystery behind its reputation or how it obtained one isn't a mystery at all if you look at it objectively. you seem to question why it is happening, and i am explaining it to you.

it is not in and of itself the vehicle's capabilities which is the reason why it has its reputation. it is because it is named bob semple joseph stalin tank. sherman tank. those are names. they connote something. notice the difference also between panther, tiger, storm tiger, king tiger, or just panzer mark I II III IV V or whatever. t-34 / t-55 / t-62 / t-72 ... sounds like some kind of industrial design produced in numbers out of system which they fit with like birds of a feather. see soviet style art forms of the 1930s and its derivatives, and the way a society presents itself to the world as a kind of mechanized machine as a whole. so you see it is the butt of jokes because it is a bob semple. the public figure and its namesake sound like an accountant or a contestant on jeopardy or something- bob semple it deserves its reputation.

as i understand it, it is not per se the armor values which are at issue, but post penetration events behind the armor. you report multiple hits on the t-72, some of which are hits on the lower glacis, likely which are not the most critical, and some which bring them closer to the ammunition and propellant storage. and so i agree that this looks sketchy, and incidentally i believe we all experience this sort of thing from time to time, and not just with the t-72. but absent esim revisiting this area, i have always pined for an evacuation or dismounting of crews at any rate- the crew in this t-72 might have booked before the next several shots, saving you the frustration. as an aside, one video worth watching from the formerly known ukrainian azov group- one of the truly more capable fire brigades thrown around to shore up flagging units, there is video of an m113 or YPR based vehicle hit by a shaped charge. you see it from inside, the compliment of crew and dismounts abandon the vehicle which doesnt immediately have anything wron with it which is apparent. a few minutes later it is brewing up. and so what i mean with my suggestion isnt meant to replace an event, but may preempt multiple attempts with the same results (or lack thereof)

my suggestion is not to replace any specific scenario where you believe that a penetration should blow up the vehicle- absent esim committing resources reworking the model, which is what that would entail, it is more of a catch all which correlates to one or more plausible events- which at the very least could reduce the number of rounds spent trying to ko a specific vehicle. you can move on to the next target. penetrations into vehicles which do not touch off the ammunition immediately are probably perceived as violent events by crews- in those instances where you have smart phone video by crews memorializing their battles from the inside of their vehicles, it looks like to me they nearly always evacuate which makes the vehicle combat ineffective (you obviously only have video where that is possible- with catastrophic detonation, of course you do not have any corroborating video). non ammunition fires starting in the engine or somewhere in the electrical racks are also fairly common- which have the chance of spreading and increase the chance for sympathetic ammunition detonation. my suggestion is meant to render the vehicle combat ineffective by approximating those kinds of events without necessarily esim spending considerable time engineering the code if that is not possible or being considered at this time, but is at least a work around the nagging "target. re-engage. target. re-engage. target. re-engage. target. re-engage, etc)."

it would be useful to create a 'evacuate crew if' condition in the mission editor in order to approximate somewhat ambiguous conditions that are not currently modeled- i.e,, a slow fire spreading throughout the vehicle threatening the safety or the operational ability of the vehicle during combat, or sufficiently damaged components which in their context might cause the crew to bail out. there is no way to train a crew, which are sensitive organisms evolved to remove themselves from the searing sensation of fire to stay with a burning vehicle- there are horrendous examples of victims choosing to throw themselves out of high rises rather than accepting the choice of burning alive- or from burning vehicles. even in the examples of M1A1 tanks knocked out in ukraine with compartmentalized ammunition storage the crews are bailing as the ammunition cooks off and the smoke and fire spreads into the fighting compartment and into the engine. with a user defined conditioned as to when this happens there would not be some arbitrary sense of it happening and elicit user complaints, and it would probably stave off many of the situations where you see that 'immortal' BMP-1 or something which is hit repeatedly but will not die

might be the same behavior i described here:

well of course the other issue is that no one on either side- neither the russians nor the ukrainians and those in the west/nato orbit - planned it like this. few in their respective governments planned it like this. there are examples of it being predicted to happen like this going back quite a ways, but as we see now they were not listened to the unprecedented density of armored vehicles did not manifest the way supposed to. so either side adapts in order to play this game. which of course cannot be won, because by definition you just keep evolving in the attempt to beat the game. and so does the other side. and so we ended up with what we have now. and this is what it does, and this is what it always did - that is what kubrick was showing in the opening act of 2001: a space oddyssey the information is what has changed, and that too appears to always evolve. you get the world war 2 narrative- and everyone by now knows what that looks like- soldiers marching off to music and it most definitely is a show. world war I was mostly pop tunes on the radio and war bonds drives. during the vietnam war you had really the first embedded press and tv war. operation desert storm went the other way, it was mostly censored because one of the lessons supposedly that we had too much freedom of the press during the vietnam war. if you look at the wars in the last 20 years, as the internet was still fairly new, you see the information space evolve where it is not simply coming from the government or government sanctioned press, these drones start appearing more and more, and the press showing things which beyond merely "news" both affects the outcome of the war as well as public opinion- and either one informs the other. and from that, and a lack of control over the drone footage (iraq, libya, afganistan, syria, The nagorno-karabakh. saudi-yemen war, and so on- soldiers in the field are uploading these things and a lot of it is uncensored by the governments. this goes both ways- on the one hand it serves as useful morale boosting press, at the same time even video which shows successful strikes on an opponent still yields useful information to the other side at the very least i personally view it all as deterministic and it could not have happened any other way. it is like a steel beasts scenario once the starting conditions are seeded at mission time such and such, it happens the only way it could have. if you look at it going backwards like an AAR report, you see the chain of causation

i am not sure this is what the video title claims to be to be straight, the clickbait titles of these kinds of videos are a bit of put off, first, these are people dying on both sides that are kind of used for entertainment and mocked and this sort of thing. second, a lot times it is not what is claimed. i have seen two perspectives and both claim it is an ATGM scoring on an M1A1 an interesting component of this conflict is that technology has empowered anyone with an internet connection to geolocate where these events are happening in near real time, so it is possible to predict movements and assess results of battles based on locations of identified pictures and video. the fog of war is peeled back in a novel way since it is fairly easy now to locate destroyed vehicles with other orientation points- road junctions, treelines, villages, fields, other destroyed vehicles and powerlines like you see in this video compared with the images; and so i see no reason to be too suspicious. but whether this is a t-72 hitting an m1 abrams i have yet to see more evidence of it to argue that is what it is. so far i have definitively seen three distinct m1a1 tanks ko'ed plus at least two m1150 path clearing vehicles claimed as tanks knocked out

painting the camo nets onto the skin usually does not produce the result like that in your image- the net has a third dimension such as its own thickness raised or extended from the skin, which cannot be replicated in the same way (imagine painting any external stowage on a vehicle in two dimensions- very difficult to achieve an effect like that) hopefully esim will include add optional vehicle attachements in the mission editor st sone point

blue commander, may we ask that if the agreed rules inherently entail a few short turns to resolve the conflict and determine the winner, and since MP sessions are not going to go on forever and are timed either by game rules or practical necessity, would it be best to attack as soon as possible and capture as much ground as possible, since there is no point in dragging it out since the timer will expire sooner rather than later? would not an aggressive approach to capture as much territory as quick as possible just as time runs out be the correct move? if you are behind in score total, then does it not makes sense not to delay too long with too much complicated behavior- or why not?

red commander: may we ask if it is better for you to defend your gained territory now, and forgo any more offense? if you are ahead in point total, would not drag out a stalemate be the best strategy?

you are publishing this in an open forum for the community. you have my attention. consider a press statement from either side in this thread. either one of which not only gives not per se an AAR but a narrative sometimes provided as fact. consider bluffing your hand. and we will watch it here. the rest of the community will try to figure out who has the upper hand based on what is posted. maybe it will not quite translate though