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Captain_Colossus

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Everything posted by Captain_Colossus

  1. 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
  2. might be the same behavior i described here:
  3. 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
  4. 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
  5. 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
  6. 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?
  7. 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?
  8. 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
  9. this would be very good drama if a representative of either side presented their side's case of the conflict. this is part of the game. someone might boast about victories to come, but that risks revealing strategy if it were true. then again that could be part of the strategy to make the other side believe that is what you intend to do next. now it is 6D chess or whatever
  10. once again you see the piecemeal way in that the tanks are committed without infantry or IFV support, detached from a platoon or any sort of parent organization, not because of incompetence but because in the most blatant way cheap DIY drone kits have broken the game. smaller groups racing around the track under constant surveillance have less risk exposure along poor road conditions surrounded by minefields where there is less room to maneuver
  11. a relatively new bradley video likely from from ukraine's counter-offensive last year in zaporozhye
  12. 👌 if it were tied to the mission editor logic, then it can be a flexible user defined option rather than subject to user complaints of any hard set limitation or imterpretation- just like currently surrender if, or disembark if, now you have eject crew if
  13. the current battle of avdiivka is underway where these bradleys are operating, and ukraine is losing. from what i saw in the follow up to this particular event, this same bradley was knocked out either by artillery or a mine last year there was video of a russian t-90 killing a bradley. no one was saying that the t-90 was a supertank that had completely determined the outcome of the war. we have seen again and again on both sides that the attacker faces challenges that you will simply risk losses whenever you try to gather a large effort- which means shortly after you have formed up in columns you are drawing attention to yourself for the artillery and drone spotters- the fact is that vehicle vs. vehicle engagements are still very rare, any particular action you see is not demonstrative of the big picture. most tallies are accounted for by mines and drones and artillery, the latter having the most overall effect, including some unique tools available only to russia- the TOS systems and the fuel air bombs obliterating neighborhoods. and so this is a war of attrition where numbers matters and whoever cannot put up the numbers has to find creative solutions. but there is only so far that can go, and eventually it starts looking like the end is in sight- not perhaps in the next several months but perhaps a year from now the situation will have shifted to some inevitable conclusion. it is just taking time to get there in a slow roll so again, these vehicle profiles don't mean much except to prop up what people people already want to believe. in the larger scheme of things ukraine is deep trouble no matter what people want to believe
  14. and so i will add, and this not meant to discredit the idea that substance does matter, but what i am saying is that graphics do matter, and it is largely subconscious that they matter, you do not have a choice of it. if you were not born blind, your brain is attempting to map the world around you by estimating what it thinks is out there based on the information coming in through your eyes- therefore the external world you believe that you see is an experience inside your skull. your mental map of what is 'out there' is inside your brain. and what you see is your brain attempting to make sense of the world visually, combined with your sense of hearing and smell and balance and other tactile simulation. i had not played many computer games or simulations outside of steel beasts for the last 20+ years. as such i did not realize how far computer games graphics had come since then, because i had not been paying that much attention. then i played dcs and skyrim for the first time and i was quite astonished what i was seeing. flight sims without special cockpit simulators cannot replicate g effects and the feel of the aircraft and the feel of wind currents buffeting and things like this to really get an appreciation of what real flying is like- however what i saw in dcs and microsoft flight simulator comes as close as they can just with graphics techniques however they are doing that- without the aforementioned aids in the real world to orient your sense of movement in the environment that you would have in real life- nevertheless say what you will about the simulation or whether it is fun or not, i found how far they come with a sense of scale and distance which i never saw before. take the water in the below screenshots- you intuitively sense how close or how far away it is visually at different altitudes and distances- whether it is the lighting or texture results or rendering techniques at far distances or whatever it is- it looks like real water at the distances and altitudes they are trying to represent. this is much different than i remember where in the past the water really looked the same at any distance but for perhaps at a few simulated meters distance from the ground level, you may see some pixels or a few lines flash by to try to give the impression of the surface beneath the player's point of view. so this is not to put steel beasts down at all, because i will argue that the steel beasts terrain engine has improved and come far so that there is more plausible representations of an actual environment than what tank sims used to be doing.20 or 30 years ago. just look at m1 tank platoon 1 and compare it with any game which is released now and see immediately how utterly artificial those environments were and therefore could not generate results that would look anything like reality
  15. i admit my question is rhetorical and that i am already certain of what i intend already, nor do i think i have made myself clear. i will try again- when i say that graphics matter, i do not necessarily mean a particular thing like lighting (although in a game like doom back in the 1990s that was extremely immersive and important to the gameplay- the long dark corridors with malfunctioning lighting flickering and this sort of thing with the monsters breathing somewhere around the corner was what that was all about- not per se the violence and the killing which would have been just another wolfenstein 3D, but it was the environmental lighting and thoughtfulness of the game design which was different from anything else at the time. clearly it was not a detailed simulation of shooting, the gameplay is rather shallow- so doom was a very rare case where graphics and sound were more important than the gameplay or the accuracy of the ballistics or whatever. no one complained about that in doom and so of course it went on to fame and fortune). i mean by graphics as they relate to a 'simulator' just the overall impression of what you see on the monitor somewhat resembles reality. i would argue that in the 1980s and 1990s this wasn't really possible, and the kinds of home computers available to consumers at that time outside of research institutes or military simulators could scarcely if at all be used as a training aid or tool- some may point to microsoft flight simulator was actually used by flight students for instrument navigation and familiarity but still- flight sims in those days could not render environments where a user could discern the difference between 500 meters or 5000 meters above the ground- hence why landing and take off or low level flight would be entirely more difficult than it should be in real life, nor could night flying really be trained in this manner. from a ground level perspective, you could not render an environment which would not look anything like reality- so a game like electronic arts' seal team released in the 1990s could not render thick forest jungles and all the information content needed to replicate special forces operations in vietnam, that is, enemy parties could clearly be seen at any distance and there simply wasn't enough cover or concealment that personal computers at the time could render to make that a more realistic experience. so graphics are related to function in that respect- better graphics mean the potential for a better or more functional experience for lack of a better description, if of course there is the rest of the content to go along with it. and so there is a false dichotomy which often arises when someone objects and points out the such and game is pretty but it is a shallow game or whatever- and of course they are right, but that does not mean that graphics simply do not matter. again because if graphics do not matter, then you could render your entire vehicle fleet in 50 triangles and then your m2 bradleys will probably look no different than an m1113 and then when games in those days did look like that when their objects were almost indiscernible looking masses, they often had to use artificial cues like labels of the vehicle type somewhere on the screen or in the HUD or whatever to inform users. so again this isn't to say that graphics alone matter, i will also point out plenty of cases where mainstream games are completely shallow and boring at least in my view which are really just graphical experiences (which is in my opinion what games people play on their smart phones are) so that's not what i am saying. there are two extremes: graphics either don't matter, or only graphics matters, and either of which i think are wrong. now of course you will often see visitors on steel beasts channels on youtube complain about the graphics and so on, and then other users bring attention to esim's purpose and business model being military client driven first and then graphics second, but this doesn't mean however the extreme case that therefore graphics do not matter to a simulator to steel beasts at all- so for example more terrain detail naturally lends itself to simulation results rather than simply looking better. they coincide. and so of course the more detailed terrain in steel beasts as it is now is clearly better looking and more functional than steel beasts version 1
  16. but if you are trying to make the argument that graphics is unrelated either to fun and entertaining or 'realistic' or is somehow at odds with these things, i fail to see it- and which looks like to me some kind of over used fallacy. of course you certainly can compromise one or the other with limited budgets and resources, and if you can creatively get around this sometimes it works for the better (take for example the early star wars films- the low budget practical effects, set designs and look of the costumes and rubber muppets are superior to the lackluster computer generated scenes of later films- the designers used props which they bought in hardware stores and possibly apparel stores modified for the look). i am not really a huge fan of flight sims, but falcon 3.0, one of the few i spent any time with was in my view something special even by today's standards. but i returned to it just a few years ago and it does not quite capture the same experience as it once did. however the point i make is that if anyone argues that graphics is somehow icing on the cake at best, then why does esim periodically update its render engine- what purpose does it serve if not also to achieve more parity with the world it attempts to simulate? if that were not the case you could replace all the models with rasterized sprites or perhaps every vehicle with a 3D wireframe block with the words 'tank' or 'pc' inscribed on them, and render the ground terrain as a few shaded terrain tiles and a few tree models every square kilometer or so matched with the few sterotypical pyramids like you saw in those older programs representing hills and have no different experience than what you have now- if that is what you mean
  17. i do not dispute that at all- rather it is implied that the relationship between graphics and sim-like fidelity is not antagonistic, but converge with several factors in play, one of which as you say depends on the audience and popularity of the subject matter to begin with, certainly you see that in other categories, say the resources committed to racing simulations vs golf simulations. but certainly better graphics does contribute to better simulation results if all the other ingredients are also present. we can compare the barren environments of 1980s DOS games to see just how poor they were in modelling the subject matter that they purported to represent. i think in large part player's imaginations filled in the gaps, and probably explain the strange nostalgia players still have for games like M1 tank platoon I & II when they clearly are obsolete
  18. dcs and microsoft flight simulator have the graphics and the meat of 'simulation' and which i think disprove the argument that users are forced to compromise one or the other. there are console action flight combat simulators developed in the same generation (like call of duty are more similar to interactive movies than 'games'), but even these no longer have any advantage in graphics- if they ever did at all. flight simulators always had the most resources in graphics and presentation relative to their generation; if you go back to the simple flight simulators from 40 years ago, as crude as they were, there were never anything close on anything on a console, and flight action games scaled roughly similar in terms of visual results- only the most advanced arcade boards and home computers could do anything like that and were quite similar to one another visually with vector or flat shaded polygon models. for my time however, dcs and ms flight simulator just are not practical to get into. and so there is the niche that MMO tank games fill- though i have to wonder about the effect that the "free to play, pay to win" schema psychologically manipulates the player base to grind and invest more money and time into them. the game experience without that is actually quite shallow, it is the fact that players are psychologically invested into it because a carrot is constantly dangled in front of them with the vague hope of 'winning' which is also the meat of the experience. you could replace the tanks with elves and dragons and fantasy creatures to get a similar effect
  19. watching videos of world of tanks / war thunder / armored warfare / my impression is that even if they used the same figures as steel beasts, they would still generate very different results because their assumptions about what happens behind the armor are a bit different- hits exchanged between same tier vehicles are usually critical and kill outright. the graphic window they use to visualize the results serve the purpose to titilate the player, but the results are nearly always the same. subjectively, two of the toughest vehicles to ko in steel beasts are the MRAPS and the pirahana based 90 and 30 mm gun carriers, not because of their armor values, but because perforations do not do much to them- as a result i have seen tanks deplete their ammunition loads while they still remain in play; every imprortant component might be damaged, and they might be immobilized, but the attempt is hopeless . still, with the mission editor, i often work in a destroy if condition attached to all vehicles in order to approximate crews bailing or incapacitated and so on, so that opposing units do not spend all their efforts on disabled but still live targets which refuse to die
  20. if you have not tried it yet, you can specify different styles. this was a specified request in pencil sketch style. bing's algorithm is sensitive with its content policy though- i requested nothing more than ' a modern tank battle ' and my request was blocked. but that is microsoft; other image generators without the corporate liability are probably better for that
  21. common objects for city scapes, civilian and military infrastructure: construction cranes water tower (already present as a custom object in some of the optional map downloads, but not available for any other map). flagstaff for all parties with national standards support structures to create refineries
  22. created through bing image generator, 2 iterations. another iteration did not quite match the given parameters. rather easy to use for your steel beasts scenario marquee adverts and so on within limitations- violent war themed images by whatever metric the AI deems too much out of line with its standards can prompt warnings about your account being flagged. it is not necessarily easy to know specifically beforehand what does that, you are just playing with fire if the description alludes to actors destroyed and blowing up and so on in a way however it does diminish the perceived value of art- because it is too easy, requiring no skill
  23. i know that you look at me and angelina and brad and you cannot help but admire us. well we feel the same way about you. you look so carefree and content. it looks different to us
  24. hodges, hr mcmaster, petraeus, milley, austin- all must really be reflecting on their attention their own past statements except that no one holds them to account, that is, how they were wrong- the mainstream media itself has demonstrated how unreliable it is and is blatantly manufacturing the correct narrative no matter how bizarre. the textbook russian defense that the media, encouraged by pundits and political hacks to believe was a farce and something left over from world war two just underscoring how primitive and incompetent the russians were- tore up the roughly what- somewhere between one and two ukrainian corps intended to break through and push on to the azov coast. you have a multi-echeloned defense stretching for miles- well the first line is intended to be penetrated - because then an attacker finds itself raked by fire from multiple directions, while the russians re-seed minefields behind or around the attacker. then the problems are just starting to become apparent- because behind that is the second line, which is the main russian defense- again., the same problem as before if they get this far but even more intense; then behind that is typically where the reserves are which counterattack any forces which are dithering in kill zones and so on. depending on the sector, there could be more defensive belts depending on the importance signed by the russians. and when you looked at the maps when all of this happening you could practically see where the russians were enticing the ukrainians to penetrate- because you would see what looks like a relatively weak pocket separating trench positions as if there was some kind of lax oversight. now of course the ukrainians never got that far- the stories abou ukrainian making breakthroughs never happened- instead the ukrainians fell apart among the russian screen positioned in front of the main defenses- these groups did not expect nor intend to hold this territory, but just to wear out the spear through a push and pull seesaw action- attack, retreat, fall back, displace, lure attackers into minefields and fire sacks and so on. keep attacking then displace, give up infantry positions then retake them again, the repeat and keep this pressure going. throughout all of this ukraine captured maybe a dozen or so small settlements consisting of small farming communities in the forward area- but that was all, other than a few small infantry groups which made into the russian defenses for a photo op before having to pull out again before the drones and the artillery started zeroing in. but of course this was all being played up as some kind of breakthrough which was going on. and so i think the real problem for russia wasn't a ukrainian breakthrough but that ukraine would have gotten smart all of this and called it off too early, preserving its forces for the next round of the russian offensive, which is not going to look like the long parked columns. the problem was the public and i think many of the leadership do not understand what they are dealing with- ukraine capturing ground is not per se winning for ukraine, that is certainly not the russians are viewing it, as if you all that is needed to score points mean getting past the defense in a hocky or football analogy or whatever- which mean next to nothing in this conflict, instead the russians view trading territory for attrition on ukraine as intentional and desireable. and so in a similar way it was a trap like bakhmut was intended to draw in as many ukrainians as possible, then cinch the trap and destroy as much of the ukrainian armed forces as possible- which you saw similarly in last year's ukrainian counteroffensive which was eventually shut down by the fall of 2022- and which resulted in the destruction of the best the ukrainian army. and so it is not a stalemate and never was a stalemate, which is a misunderstanding of how russia is grinding down ukraine because it is not proceeding as quickly as desert storm or iraqi freedom, so therefore it is not understood too well how the russians view the progress of the war and how to win differently from the west- which looks like reality to starting to catch up and more and more the public is now realizing this
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