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Werewolf

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Posts posted by Werewolf

  1. 15 hours ago, Kev2go said:

     

    I suppose other reasons .its not just ease of maintenance or ease of  training. historically technology always has advanced over time. and when applied to military technology, so goes up the lethality. 

     

    partially its different doctrine and philosophies. because soviets had superior #s. If you cant match or exceed #s then i suppose you have ought to try to compensate with better tech & quality, in order to beat your foe if the **** hits the fan.  with better economy It meant the west , us to a even greater degree could simply afford to invest in better tech, and eventually come up with superior platform as well, later down the road, Ie the m1. its also about preserving lives, when it comes to protection/ survivability aspect of tanks. For eg. the placing of placing ammunition behind blast doors in a separate compartment so crew doesnt die in a fiery inferno is huge milestone for tank evolution in general, and arguably one of the most relevant innovations.

     

    Isnt that military tech in general,  especially if accelerated in a cold war. If country A makes better AFV, country B will counter it and try to make something better. Eventually country A ends  up outdoing country B and end up with something newer, better. Rinse and Repeat. 

     

    The modern cavarlyman no longer rides a horse armed with sabre or repeating rifle, but since ww2 riding the tank which on its own has greatly evolved.  the fighter pilot no longer flies piston or subsonic jet armed with mere guns, but operates fast, sleek faster than ( or up to speed of sound) jets loaded with electronics, radars, and missiles capable of knocking out other aircraft before they get into visual range. 

     

    yes i agree the man matters more than the machine, but we can all agree we want to be the guy wielding a gun to a knife fight , not the other way around. 

     

    Also i understand where your coming from though, Its the tank you trained on, and served in. You were proficient with it, and felt confident against tanks if the time. its going to hold sentimental value to you. just like a civilians memory of the thier first car.

     


     

     

     

    All very good and convincing points!

  2. 3 hours ago, Kev2go said:

    I guess it depends on perspective. I'm no tanker but I see the improved systems a great aid in increasing efficiency and requiring less manual skill, and therefore less practice. Perhaps gunner has to do less. But he is more efficient at hitting stuff due to the aid of better technology?  I mean in comarison the coincidence range finder required more work. Ghosting image to get range took longer than the lazing process which is why I'm guessing it  was strictly in the TC position. With the a3 pretty much just requires gunner or tc to push 1 button  after sight is aimed and a second ( or less) later you have your range.

     

    I served for 3 years in M60A1's ('71 to '74) with the stereoscopic range finder. Except for an inability to shoot on the move I'd put the gunners and TC's I served with on those tanks up against the best that any M1A1 crew can field.

     

    On the qualification courses in Grafenwoehr our best crews could put two rounds down range in less than 7 seconds with a 90+% 1st round hit at 2000 yards and 95% at 1500. Switch to moving targets and at 1500 we were at 87% 1st round hit and damn near 100 with 2nd round. At any range 1300 yards or less, a gunner who missed his target either stationary or moving risked having the boot of his TC firmly planted on the back of his head. 

     

    We were good. Really good. We had to be - we were told and we believed that if the balloon ever went up we were expected to take out 5 of them before we were allowed to get taken out ourselves.

     

    Could we have done better with the equipment that modern tankers have at their disposal. Maybe but I'm not convinced. One must then ask if that's true why did the government spend so much money on the tech? Because - as was pointed out - it does require less training, they can shoot effectively at longer ranges, the equipment may be more reliable, may be easier to replace if it breaks (you don't ever want to have to replace the analog/mechanical computer on an M-60A1 in the field - but I imagine that replacing the digital computer on an M1 is just a matter of unbolting the box and replacing it as a unit - turning it on, entering calibration mode, and then maybe a trip to the range to verify it all works).

     

    It's the man using the equipment and not the equipment that counts (well mostly - I'd hate to have competed with a bow - then again Japanese Samurai were pretty darn fast and accurate with a bow at short range and I sure wouldn't want to face off against one from 100 yards if all I had was a pistol - but that's just me - one of my best friends can easily hit a 12" gong at 200 yards with a 9mm pistol using iron sights - the sucker has 20/8 vision - we call that fighter pilot eyes :D)

     

    Example:

     

    I'm a handgun shooter. Used to participate in IPSC and CAS competitions. CAS is cowboy action shooting. When I started it was fun to practice quick draw with the period style revolvers we used. I'd draw against myself looking into a full length mirror using a Ruger Vaquero. I got pretty fast, real fast actually and I'm here to tell you that I'd have had no problem using that single action revolver with sights that were just a groove in the receiver and a thumb nail sized blade mounted on the end of the barrel in competition against someone with modern optics sitting atop a Sig P220 or Cz-75 for example. And I consider myself just a bit better than average. I've seen guys reload a modern revolver with a swing out cylinder and a speed loader so fast that unless you're watching it you wouldn't know they'd reloaded at all. I've watched the same guys shoot steel disks off a Texas Star (moving target - maybe some videos on You Tube) so fast that I can't even tap my finger as fast as they can pull one and shoot.

     

    Point is that it is the man, the crew that account for 95% of how well they perform and not the equipment. 

     

    Or - maybe it's not and I'm just biased (the US Army does a really good job training and <gag> indoctrinating its troops - I bet even after 42 years I could still tear apart the breach mechanism of the L60 105mm main gun and put it all back together again).

     

     

     

     

  3. 22 hours ago, Panzer_Leader said:

     

    It wasn't my wish to bring the community or this forum into disrepute so I retract the post and have deleted the original. Apologies. 

     

    You did no such thing. I remember back in 2005 or 2006 when SB went retail for real. 

     

    The doom crowd who just couldn't get past "Last man standing" death match mode started joining up in MP in droves (hyperbole, exageration - you get the idea) and totally ruined the community - for a while anyway. 

     

    It was one of my hot buttons.

     

    From what I've observed from reading the forum since coming back - though I haven't played in a single MP game - the community has recovered.

     

    Call me elitist if y'all will - probably true - but encouraging the WOT crowd to join in on MP is a bad, bad idea.

     

    Not to say that all of them are script kiddy, shoot 'em up, FPS last man standing guys (one of my best friends who loves WOT and plays it regularly - if I could get him to try SB - would be a great addition to the community) are not what the community needs but most probably aren't. 

     

    If you want to mess up the SB MP community then by all means encourage the WOT crowd to join right in!

  4. I am a lot buzzed right now so to Ssnake - if this has actually been fixed then I apologize for the below and please delete. To the rest of the community: posting after drinking a half bottle of port is bad form, causes one to post stupid *&^%$ that even though it may be true is still probably posted in a less than appropriate manner.

     

    Those that have been around since 2002 are probably already thinking to themselves - ahhh crap. He's at it again.

     

    Anyway - here goes...

     

    Possibly already mentioned.

    Possibly already fixed in 3.028 or 4.004 (pretty sure not fixed in 3.028 which is where I'm at now - though to be fair - there are work arounds - shouldn't have to use one but...).

     

    Fix AI controlled AFV's so they WILL NOT DRIVE INTO LAKES, RIVERS OR STREAMS that will immobilize them.

     

    I do understand that SB isn't perfect (really, I do) and no game is but the only thing in SB that really PISSES me off is a tank or PC driving to it's ultimate death or uselessness by being so stupid as to drive into an over sized puddle that will KILL it.

     

    I can say from real life experience that in the 3 years I served on active duty in the US Army in M60A1's not once did I ever see, become aware of or experience a tank in my unit or any other drive into a body of water that would have immobilized it either by accident or on purpose.

     

    If it's still an issue - tipsy or not - one has to wonder - WHY IN ALL THE YEARS SB HAS BEEN OUT HAS IT NOT YET BEEN FIXED?

  5. Quote

    If you have a nVidia card you can use "Shadow Play"

     

    Good point! And Shadow Play is great. Used a lot until I started recording longer videos.

     

    The gotcha is that the output file size is limited. Even with a 64bit system! I forget the limit but what ever it is if you're recording in HD you usually hit it around 15 minutes in or so.

     

    EDIT: did some checking the limit is 4GB if using W7 for W8 and above the limit has been taken out. nVidia promised to fix the limit for W7 way back in 2013 but as of Dec 2015 when I stopped using it the limit for W7 was still 4GB

  6. On 8/25/2016 at 2:38 AM, Furia said:

    I think we have a nice and properly dimensioned comunity. I recall sometimes playing almost 40 players in a  Long Night of Tanks of some of the major multiplayer events.

    The people here are in a majority mature, knowledgeable on the armour subject, motivated and educated.

    This is a complex simulator, new guys are often fustrated when they start playing SB because they maybe heroes playing Waste of Time or similars and here they do not survive 5 minutes on the battlefield.

    This sim required a more "mature" approach than the actual mainstream "military games". You have to train, you have to study, you have to learn the hard way.

    This is not a private club. Anyone willing can join but most of the youngsters prefer games like "Plug and shoot" or even better "plug and Boom" :P

    I like our actual comunity this way. Quality over quantity. B|

    Anyway doors are open and anyone that shows up is helped and welcomed.

     

    Very, very well said and very, very TRUE!

  7. Fraps is OKAY...

    Action! by Mirillis is way better. Lots of features, most I don't use but a lot of you tube content creators do. Best video quality of any Video recorder I've tried and I've tried a number of them. Small files when using MP4 (recorded a 40 minute Elite Dangerous session at 1920X1080 and it was 9.7Gb - so I tried another 40 minute session using AVI - over a hundred gig - huge difference and I couldn't tell the difference in quality between the two). Seperate audio track which I don't use but probably will someday. It also has a save last 5 minutes function where you can save into a seperate file what ever just happened (you can set the time - to what you want - up to 5 minutes - maybe more). Very useful. You can upload straight to YouTube and it converts your saved file on the way. You can use it to stream live to you tube or twitch. That's just a subset of what it'll do.

     

    You can buy it direct from Mirillis or off of Steam. I recommend getting it direct from Mirillis - very good customer support as opposed to the worse than no support steam provides (they've got a lot of balls calling what they provide customer support).

     

    https://mirillis.com/en/products/action.html

  8. On 7/14/2016 at 4:39 PM, Ssnake said:

    right now turning legacy code into parallelized code in a non-destructive way is a very difficult job if you're expected to continue developing on the feature side of the application at the same time. But what good, for example, is a factor two or four when we increased the line of sight calculation requirements by (potentially) a factor of twelve when we introduced multi-party capability?

     

    And that answers the question I was going to ask perfectly. And that answer points definitively at what will be an extremely difficult decision eSim games will eventually have to make.

     

    From a purely business point of view based on limited information, I submit that the current code should stay at 3.0 in it's current state simply because it is legacy code that can no longer be adapted to an increasingly evolving environment - to wit - it can neither be rewritten to take advantage of multiple cores nor can it be rewritten so that currently produced GPU's would benefit much from increased graphic routine optimization.

     

    That would, I am sure, be a very unpopular decision with most SB players (I doubt if the military customers would give a hoot though). However, what would be the PR ramifications of releasing a version 4 if its performance is such that your typical PC just won't produce the FPS that contemporary gamers have come to expect. Even with expert optimization of the current code Ssnake has as much as admitted that the performance will not meet the 60 FPS which is rapidly becoming the normal expectation of contemporary gamers.

     

    Which leaves a complete rewrite of the code as the one option for 4.0 that would provide a solution with the downside (a major one to be sure) being it may take 2, 3 or even 4 to 5 years to get there.

     

    There's a saying, Ssnake, that goes like this: It's GOOD to be the KING.

    What it fails to say, though, is that along with the good comes the bad and sometimes, sometimes, it sucks to be the KING.

     

    This may very well be one of those times for eSim.

     

  9. On 6/11/2016 at 11:13 AM, Homer said:

     

    How did you get from Largest Sea Battle in WWI to Greatest/Most Decisive Sea Battle Ever?  Jutland was significant in that the British gained little in victory but could have lost everything if defeated.  It was possible for the Germans to "win the war in a single afternoon".  What was wrong with the Brit ship designs?

     

     

    British Battle Cruisers were designed to be heavily armed but lightly armored for a ship of their size. It was their Achilles Heel so to speak. Other nations tried the concept - including the US in WWII with the Alaska class - I think that was our BC design - but it never made it out of the shipyards and I believe ended up being converted to something else or maybe scrapped - not sure.

     

    Largest, greatest - synonymous in my head though there is surely a semantic difference which should have been recognized.

     

    Still - Jutland was a relatively large if not at least in the top 5 of modern surface warfare sea battles. (I wouldn't count some of the sea battles of WWII between US and Japan as they included mostly carrier taskforces that never even saw each other but did include a larger number of ships participating).

  10. Greatest sea battle?

    For some reason I thought we'd see the most decisive. Jutland was big but it really didn't impact WWI except to point out to the british some pretty bad design flaws in their ships.

     

    Most decisive sea battle ever  that impacted more than just a war but the entire history of western civilization?? I'd have to say the Battle of Salamis.

  11. 7 hours ago, DarkAngel said:

    Completely unnecessary to check individual units. There is the catch all (Friendly/Known enemy/enemy) units anywhere are under direct fire. To stop AI units firing at the enemy you can set them to be neutral under the side setup and change that when the enemy cross the border (using the enemy units in region X > 0 ) logic. This means the friendly AI will not engage until a border breach. Then all you need to check for is the player which you can do as I described above.

     

    Ah hah...

    I do believe DarkAngel that you have hit the nail on the head with your suggestions. I'll travel down that path and see if I can build a set of events that will work.

     

    Thanks, man...

  12. I'd like to create a set of victory conditions something like this: Both sides (player and AI) start with 100 pts

     

    Player:

    Is penalized if he fires 1st without either having been fired upon by enemy OR enemy units enter a custom region and player gets message OKAY to engage. OKAY to engage would be an event. That simulates command authority to fire if enemy crosses the border - stupid politicians - may just decide to pull 'em back. The logic is extremely simple. What isn't simple is detecting when the player fires - that's what I cannot figure out how to do.

  13. 12 hours ago, Gibsonm said:

    I think so.

    We at BG ANZAC are developing a series of similar sized ones for teaching purposes and maybe at some future date "accreditation".

    Ours are primarily aimed at small level drills, such as:

    Mech Pl adv/atk/defence/delay

    Leg Pl adv/atk/defence/delay

    Cav sector search, route recon, ...

    All - Resupply.

    All - Breaching / SOSRA

    etc.

    Good luck with yours. :)

     

     

    What you have described re: training drills was my original intent when I 1st thought of doing something like this. But it didn't take long to figure out that the training I received in armor operations and tactics over 40 years ago really no longer applies in the 21'st century so I relegated that particular objective to the dust bin.  The tech has come too far. For example something as seemingly simple as night vision and IR has changed things completely. The US Army does things now that in my day would have been considered impossible and foolhardy. Digital communications, TV screens with maps of battlefields in every tank, tanks that can scream across a battlefield at 40MPH (if we'd done that there'd have been broken bones galore onboard), gun stabilization that encourages firing while moving at high speed. All these things make it so I've no idea where to even start a scenario meant to be a training tool that would also be fun.

  14. 25 minutes ago, ht-57 said:

    Sounds gr8!

    The only thing I may Suggest is the scenario time, Could it be up to an hour.

    as 15 seems a lil quick for us ole slow folk!

     

    At 64 - I am one of those old slow folk. Reflexes are all shot to hell - one of my son in laws regularly beats me now in IPSC (International Practical Shooting Confederation) matches. I know how you feel.

  15. I was wondering if there would be any interest in what I call micro-scenarios.

    The design objectives of this type of scenario would be:

    1) to have a very limited number of units on each side - 3 platoons or less with 1 or 2 being preferable

    2) would take 15 minutes or less to play from start to finish

    3) be played on a small map of no more than a 10X10 grid

    4) victory would entail completing assigned mission objective(s) and never be just kill, kill, kill and victory could be achieved by neither, one or the other or even both sides

    5) primarily designed for single player

    6) AI setup with multiple battle plans to provide some replayability

    7) Player side set up with at least one battle plan

    8) When the default player battle plan is let alone and not touched by the player the AI battle plans should win between 40% to 60% of the time.

  16. CAVEAT: Been using PC's since 1978. Most folks I know at both work and personally believe me to be a computer whiz. They're wrong. I just know more than them. I'm far from being a hardwar guru and don't even come close to being an engineer so if my supposition about SB PRO and multicore as described below is somewhere out in left field don't be shy about correcting me.

    Been running some tests using the 64b version of SB Pro. 3.028 I believe is the version.

    My system is i7 5820K 3.6Ghz 6 Core, 16GB ram, nVidia GTX970.

    Been using MSI AfterBurner, HWMonitor, win7 performance monitor, MS process explorer and task manager to monitor temps, how SB uses memory, the GPU and CPU.

    I started monitoring because when I cranked up the graphics levels in Pro PE I saw frame rates drop down into the low 30's which is only about 10% better than I got on my old PC that had an i7 2600 series 4 core processor, a GTX 560 and 8GB of RAM. I thought that FPS to be rather low considering my current rig's capabilities. EX: With GTA 5 settings all maxed out except those setting that would make GPU memory usage go over 3.5GB I average low 50's. For Witcher 3 set on highest every thing I average high 40's to low 50's and those two games are known to stress the hell out of even the likes of a GTX980. With most everything else I get 60+ FPS.

    On Pro PE the max GPU usage I've ever seen with all the bells and whistles on is 53% and it averages 47%. Card memory usage never goes over 31% and the Temp maxes out at 50+C and that's the lowest of any game I play. Most push 70C and some move the temp up to 80C.

    So I started monitoring CPU and it doesn't appear that the load across the 6 cores and the other 6 hyperthreaded virtual cores is balanced at all. Usually just one Core is carrying almost all the load. Average CPU usage with SB PRO PE running is just 22%. On most games the CPU temp hits 48C but with SB PRO it runs between 42 and 45C. NOTE: liquid cooled CPU

    Point is that the system isn't even coming close to being stressed out.

    Framerates - even with everything maxed - out should - in my not so educated opinion - be pushing 60 at the very least but I'm lucky to get into the 50's even on a small scenario and into the mid 30's to low 40's on large scenarios. Let's not even mention Terrastan/Terrasim - run anything on it and FPS drops into the 20's.

    I don't believe that the bottleneck is graphics card. I think the bottleneck is the CPU and it's not really that either. I'm gonna just toss it out there and guess that the real performance bottleneck is that SB PRO isn't efficiently using all 6 cores and the other 6 virtual cores to do the intensive calculations necessary in a sim like SB. I'm gonna guess it's using just one and any core switching going on is being done by Win7 because I never see more than 1 or 2 cores loaded down when SB is running.

    Which begs the question: if that supposition is correct will the coming upgrade include a change that implements full usage of all cores available? Wouldn't that go a long way towards improving SB PRO PE performance.

  17. Thanks...

    Disappointing though.

    It sounds like what you are saying is that for a human player once the infantry dismounts you just build new routes for them but that the OPFOR cannot be scripted to do what I wanted to do. Is that correct or did I miss something?

  18. See subject - think Question.

    I'd like to setup a classic mechanized infantry platoon assault tactic. The most simple version taught back in the 70's.

    The platoon vehicles with squads mounted move at high speed to the drop off point. Infantry disembarks and assault immediately continues with the walking grunts beside or slightly behind the the platoon vehicles moving to the objective.

    If tanks are available (what I was in) then we were always a bit ahead of the infantry vehicles and walking grunts. Practiced this multiple times at Grafenwoehr.

    Unfortunately I can't seem to get that to work in SB Pro 3.

    I setup an assault route for the platoon with infantry mounted. At the dismount point I create another assault route leading to the objective.

    I've tried ordering the infantry to dismount at the dismount point (the waypoint) but the grunts won't walk/run forward with their mounts when the vehicles move out. I've tried ordering the infantry to dismount on the route. That doesn't work either.

    For a human player - no big deal. Once the infantry is dismounted just give the units their own assault routes and continue on.

    But for an AI controlled unit it's a no go.

    I seem to remember in SB1 all it took was switching to an engage order and slow speed and the infantry would auto move with the vehicles. Doesn't work with SB3.

    So what am I doing wrong? How do I make the infantry dismount and assault with their mounts? Or is it just not possible?

  19. Who actually bothers trying to create the scenarios where you have the mix of small-scale infantry centric engagements mixed with civilians who may or may not pull out a gun at any minute

    Well - I kind'a tried it with my Montana scenarios with vs 2.654. Tried is the operative word here. The 1st one was a small town National Guard unit taking on a US Army unit with morale built into the AI to simulate NG units probably not being able to go toe to toe with a regular US Army unit. It included civilian transport units to get the locals out of town before the US Army could take it over. Partisan root out and destroy in the 2nd one. Neither was very successful if one judges success by the number of downloads. (Which quite honestly surprised me considering the rep my SB1 scenarios had - but then they were all conventional warfare based - long gone now).

    I do agree that the nature of war as currently fought has changed considerably since the 80's/90's. And that is most assuredly a factor in how gamers make buying choices.

    Still - I stand by my assertion that the nature of the game playing public has changed for the reasons I delineated and that that is the major factor influencing the decline of the availability of military simulations being developed and released. Can anyone name a real milsim released in the last 5 years?

    I'd like to throw the DCS stuff out as a real milsim except all it really simulates is the aircraft. The DCS Combined arms module almost makes it but not quite. Rise of Flight - maybe - but historical sim might describe it better. Arma - no freaking way - it's just another shooter. Call of Duty and Battlefield - shooters plain and simple (kind'a fun but still just shooters - in fact IMO anyone playing those that goes on to join their national Army and tries to fight like they play will die very, very quickly). Combat Mission series - I've got 'em all - honestly - I don't think its a sim. What have I left out?

  20. My personal favourite is goat simulator.(just why)

    Obviously I am biased, but I could never understand why armoured sims and milsims in General have declined in sales since there hay day in the late eighties and ninety's.

    And games like candy crush sell by the million. each too there own I suppose.

    Think about it.

    Who could afford a PC in the 80's and 90's? Answer - Educated persons with good paying jobs. Not only could they afford a PC they had the smarts to play complicated wargames and other types of simulations.

    Now any Tom, Dick or Harry earning a MacDonalds paycheck or even on welfare can afford a game console or inexpensive base PC and guess what they ain't gonna waste what little brain power they've got left after smoking that joint and drinkin' the beer to go with it while sittin' on the couch playing a simulation that wouldn't do much more than give 'em a headache and frustrate the hell out of 'em. Considering half of 'em have IQ's less than a 100... - by definition 100 is the arithmetic mean IQ - Developers (most of 'em anyway) go where the money is and the money isn't in supplying complex simulations to the masses.

    And that is why the percentage of sales going to milsims and armor sims has gone down. Fewer offerings for the dedicated to play and way way more people with consoles and PC's that couldn't play 'em anyway.

    OH and here - for those that are going to flame me for being an elitist!

    :gun:

    :1: Werewolf :1:

    I just saved ya the trouble.

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