Captain_Colossus

i was never going to attempt a 1:1 reproduction of the basra area, which would prabably take me several lifetimes. this is map is an amalgamation of varying urban and regional geography into a 10 × 10 km map are with the goal of also running smoothly (as such i already had to pare down details from my initial plans)

i reject the premise that it was ever russia's intention to conquer ukraine. it was russia's intention to coerce ukraine to bargain. if you recall this actually began to happen early on in 2022 until boris johnson complicit with washington torpedoed any sort of agrreements of the kind (as if it were without our permission to grant , ). in the first weeks and months russia deliberatley left kiev and the ukrainian's political class intact instead of triangulating zelensky every time he nakes a public statement in order to leave some kind of poltical process in place. if you dont know that ukraine is getting fucked up badly and russian forces fighting now are not the same inexperienced, thinly streched battle groups like in the beginning, while i cant fault you given the astonishing level of propaganda and wishful projections, that ukraine has not contrary to the company line broken through russias layered defenses. try this and really get with it: zelensky just wrapped up his washington tour and has stated openly that if ukraine doesnt continue to receive more support, ukraine cannot win the war. again, this doesnt come from me but zelensky. how does this square with this other movie we have been watching where ukraine wins all battles, russia loses all battles, putin is a shakin in his boots and russia is collapsing. it doesnt- there is something wrong here because only one of these stories can be true, but not both. in fact i would say that you are seeing the two most experienced militaries in this type of modern warfare playing this show out- it is ukraine and russia. forget this nonsense that russians are fighting with shovels or something. it isnt true at all. if you notice for the last several weeks the ukrainians keep breaking through the russian sectors in either robotiyne or bakhmut, which is either a distortion of tge picture ir pkaying loose with semantics. generally speaking there have been no large armored units which have broken through, there are small infantry groups supported by a few vehicles which are forced to move back and forth and trade positions with the russians, any large effort cannot move undetected and are attrited rather quickly. and by the way, the target of reaching the azov coast some 50 miles still away in the southern front require the capture of tokmak and melituopol, which have defensive belts ringing them as well, and ukraine, now committing its most elite reserves into the breach when they were supposed to have broken out already, have to do all of this before the bad weather returns in a few weeks. really do pay attention to what zelensky is saying right from his own words when he admits what he just did

i do not have the time to disentangle it in order to do this. i have altogether stopped running DCS because of the lack of time. of course steel beasts appeals to the type of user willing to put in the time and effort, but this is where i drop off. other users might spend more effort, but there is notable lack of community created operations. that might suggest a steep learning curve. while i am not a developer, from a user standpoint, i might suggest a drag and drop graphical interface in some future build- that might perhaps make an operations creation tool more accessible. it is probably more for the benefit of the solitaire PE user, that is, in itself it is likely not the highest priority for eSim from the business end of things. which is understandable

i see tremendous value in development of the campaign creator in steel beasts- it should be more intuitive, more user friendly, easier to generate a campaign where results from one action carry over to the next- then the user can experiment where fast and slow might work or not because the user sees the consequences of preserving forces at the expense of gaining ground or vice versa as the next phase develops. i don't know if this is meaningful for mil customers, but for the PE user it is a different experience than compartmentalized scenarios where there is no real sense of this sort of basic dilemma other than perhaps a scoring formula in a single scenario but which is still sort of separates the user from his decisions.

it depends on the scenario- a scenario with a particular time limit conceit worked in such as capture the bridge before the opfor blows it up probably entails the player forced to rush and adhoc solutions which means a fairly easy opportunity to present obstacles and challenges and rack up casulaties against the player. there is probably no escaping the fact that a scenario is a reflection of the designer's ego, as you can imagine mamy are designed to be artificially difficult where the enemy never routes or surrenders but simply fights to the last, in which case it can be difficult and time consuming to create and exploit a breakthrough. what is called thunder run was a unique chain of improvised events rather than a single action of the typical steel beasts scenario, precisely because at this phase iraqi restance began to melt back into the cities and morphed into an insurgency, which is what bogged down occupation forces and which was the intent rather than to throw everything into one final battle. this is far away different from near equivalent forces fighting in ukraine where settlements and small villages repeatedly change hands, where attacking forces rush in with suppressive fires and displace quickly before artillery missiles and drones start zeroing in. still those same rushing units might blunder into minefields and anti-tank killzones- so in reality there is no either or solution for all cases in this type of warfare. there needs to be more context given before a rule like that can be applied

if it is a bot, interacting with it is probably teaching it- and when i say it, i do not mean just the bot but the collective AI development effort to be more sophisticated in its responses. there was a report (or with a caveat- a rumor) some several weeks ago that an air force computer program went rogue during an exercise and began interpreting its own human controllers as obstacles to its mission and recognized attempts to corall it in as hostile- which was a 'correct ' but creative solution to the very problem it was given- to accomplish the mission, leading to a HAL like paradox. all of this- whatever this is- simply is improved the more we interact with it or attempt to get it under control, much like viruses are never eradicated but co-evolve with us in our attempts to stave them off. we are essentially paying these developers to further develop this kind of technology when we buy their smart devices and install them at home and whatnot or use their services, even if unwittingly. so all of this was inevitable and attempting to stem the tide only further evolves their sophistication

road intersection tool in the map editor - user can quickly add a + x or T type junction which can be rotated - and a tool which aligns nearby connecting roads that the user selects or defines

i give credit where credit is due. if you have something valuable to add other than heckling- which i admit is part of the show, and only helps to elucidate my points, since all heklers are inherently at a disadvantage and provide the opportunity for strenghtening a- position then i will admit a good point when it is not something i have considered. ill even cut you some slack. but no- i think i have seen all there is to your show. in several posts now what have you said to rebut the substance of what i have said or offered any competing theories- none. and so i think this is what you are about.

you are wrong- i wouldnt say that i am original at all, but i would say that i tend to agree with critics who apply some common sense to all of this, and of course collectively you can csll us right wing and russian shills- which is all you have done as if that is some kind of rebuttal. well good for you. however i come from a tradition where we used to admire the methods of voltaire and so on- the west is imcreasingly throwing out rational debate and criticism and replacing that with a form of authoritarianism of its own- "you cant say that because my feelings are hurt" or you cant disagree or you are an extremist. you can only stick to the script so that no one is triggered. i watch our public institutions increadingly grow these kinds of citizens and exporting this tendency of dismantling free exchange of disagreements abroad, which i definitely regard as rot as much as any kind of evil you may find in russia or china or iran ir north korea

there you go, you just revealed your hand. "what- russian bot" and this what i have said i encounter over and over and why you are triggered- it is the same script over and over, which i have pointed out before, and you are seeing that pointed at you for some reason. now why is that? you did not even provide an actual counter argument- which at least might be interesting. which again looks like a script when you dont though

yes of course- you can never accoint for all wrinkles- say a meteor suddenly crashes on someones head or some other extraordinary wrinkle- which is why i think ukraine is hitting office buildings in moscow or attacking ships with drones- which wont by themselves turn its fortunes around on any front. but in the same way zelensky was trying to suggest that russia would all of a sudden destroy a nuclear power plant within falllout range of its own forces and its own territory (despite the international atomic energy acencies' own statement that its inspectors found no such evidence of that at all), this looks to me like zelensky attempting to throw a wrinkle into the game by escalating it, somehow involving nato states snd changimg the outcome- these sorts of stunts actually look like they come from a position of growing desperation rather than a clear sense of a way out of its predicament. this is of course my opinion, but that is the risk i am willimg to take when i openly give my analysis. and so this too is part of the show- if no one did this, then there would be no critics either, including myself when i criticize western leaders for their incoherent, false or optimistic statements given in bad faith that they know to untrue

there is never and then there is never; there is impossible and there is impossible. insofar as a ten year old child would never deafeat the current heaveight champion of the world under sanctioned boxing rules that is, not without some kind of cheat or something extraordinary like an undiagnosed heart condition, likwise, it is impossible to add an electron or a proton to helium to obtain gold, i would be the first to say that i all but said in the clearest and most unambiguous sense that ukraine would never win the war- if by winning you use ukraines own metric that winning means restoring ukraine's territory to pre-2014. cannot be done, not even with the combined efforts of a ukraine-nato mission before an intervening nuclear exchange were to occur, in which case no one actually wins. and connected to this i said it would be impossible for ukraine to succeed in this phase of the conflict. of course if i am correct, then i just got 'lucky' and if i am wrong, then i wasn't 'unlucky', i was just ignorant and foolish. and this is generally the way in which the whole discourse around this conflict is narrated like this and both sides are guilty of it. the alternative is to hedge but anyone can do that- i can always prognosticate that tomorrow it will either rain or it will not, and i will be right- but this is an empty statement if true. it reveals nothing while creating the illusion that i have revealed some important piece of the puzzle; this not to say that it isn't ok to admit not knowing, but recall the basic paradox when we say something of the sort: 'never say never'. its all inherently a game. hindu cosmology depicts reality, life itself as a drama, in a similar way there has been all sorts of literature explaining the world stage in terrms of actors and players. it is only natural for the audience if you like to somehow be invested in what goes on, to guess with involved interest in tbe next act. you do this all the time at sporting events, the cinema, watching the news, indeed in the entanglements of your own affairs as well as the drama in the world. so from all of this when you get this, you see through the game as it were, you see the whole show as if behind the curtain you see how the act works, with the audience involved- there is no show without an audience, nor an audience without the show. try to remove the observer from the observed, or the other way around- it cannot be done. from that standpoint the audience too is the show from internet flame wars to leaders at the very top and media channels to obfuscate one another and their audiences.you cannot simply unpack the noise from the show, or the opinions from the facts. and so man has evolved past the more primitive types of passive camoflage or deception you see in the rest of nature to very convoluted active types of politiking and propaganda, and most of us are captive audiences and performers to one another, save for some individuals who bow out of society or live in seclusion

i realistically expected this not to go down well- i have said as much quite a number of times in several threads, i have said that there was no possible way that adequate training would be achieved in a few months, among other things, even if that were achieved, there are still other major problems that are not solved; in no way did i have some kind of unrealistic explanation at all so that this is somehow all a surprise- if anyone has been more persistent to argue that ukraine was not going to reach the azov sea within a few weeks or likewise liberate the donbas, i have yet to see it here anyway. honestly i have made my case there is no realistic way given that these goals could be achieved, and this is no surprise to me. i see that petraeus just doubles down with no irony at all in how wrong he has been, and i certainly remember the press all but laughing at the antiquated defensive belts russia was constructing- well when they can no longer delude themselves or the public, now they are perhaps just starting to admit just how wrong they have been- perhaps little by little, but when they can no longer cover or lie, whichever the case is, i suppose by that point the public has already forgotten and they just move on to the next story. this is perhaps the third iteration of the ukrainian army, regardless, the pattern has been playing out over and over, one iteration is all but destroyed, another one is mobilized for it to happen again; it is just the utterly bizarre way that in the public consciousness the degree what is happening is either ignored, suppressed or denied. even today i talk to other people who might have some interest in the war, and they are literally astonished when i explain that as far as i can tell, ukraine is nowhere near zelensky's stated goals of liberating all territory by the summer of this year and i cannot see that happening ever at all minus somehow nato were to get involved (and in which case you may as well throw that scenario out as well because that probably means a nuclear war) - they think i drank the kool aid somehow, and i might as well be telling them that the earth is flat. but whatever.

yes. but will the west glean anything from it- in a nuanced admission, the NYT just published an article that western equipment and/or training is not working and that ukraine is forced to change direction on the ground, using smaller assault groups. this does not appear to be working so well either. you see in this video the sloppy and piecemeal attack of two unsupported vehicles racing to a likely ambush point (not that i second guess the crews, they are only doing what they can). meanwhile the press still whitewashes the reality that the ukrainian offensive is flopping and running out of time, at most securing small settlements while russia continuously counterattacks and replants minefields and wears down the offensive. the president just a few days ago rambled the usual line that russia has already lost but at the same time let the cat out of the bag that the west is running out of conventional 155mm artillery shells, which is why they are reaching further into stockpiles of DPICM while scrounging from japan and south korea. in this phase of the conflict it does not change anything to add western equipment into the mix in the larger context (they are more survivable for individual crews however)

correctly assessing evolving threats goes without saying- the trick is actually pulling it off while an opponents is also attempting to guess the next correct move. and so i make the case that observable phenomena is deterministic- not to be equated with an infallible prognostication, but rather determinism means that in hindsight the chain of causation theoretically can be deduced i.e., odds given a player to win who should have won , individual battles may be won but perhaps operational or strategic goals still fail- in retrospect, we can study what happened and identify what went wrong, but we did not correctly predict so many moves ahead (or at least policy makers didn't), at the time. a given steel beasts scenario may utilize complex boolean arguments with random variables, but the AAR tool will reveal what happened deterministically when the program drew numbers from the die rolls. the current conflict in ukraine has shown the west to be a bit flumoxed at the scale of casualties- im rather certain no nato country could absorb hundreds of thousands of killed and wounded at this scale before there would be considerable domestic pushback (let alone supply the manpower numbers to begin with), the scope of which is unimaginable and removed from any previous western experience since world war 2. company scale maneuvers are great but in this war it is a drop in tbe ocean compared to the weekly battalion+ losses; higher estimates place this loss rate at the daily tally. what nato army actually prepares for this- or is prepared for it. as we have seen it is something that you could have planned for one kind of conflict, your opponent also planned for it, but the interaction of that move-counter move evolved into attrition warfare which probably breaks only when a specific threshold is tripped- one side runs out of artilery shells, a supporting flank might pull back or collapse, then a whole cascade of problems begin to pick up momentum and the tide begins to turn