Captain_Colossus

this is not real at all. leaving aside your drone claim, ukraine's intelligence is very good, because it is esentially as good as NATO's intelligence; but this is matched by just as capable russian intelligence- which is very hi tech and not the least of which correlates to the recent development of new radar satellites launched by the russians- and of course russian old fasioned human intelligence from sympathizers or agents on the ground (the accurate targetting of ammunition dumps, what appears to be successful strikes on ukrainian intelligence bunkers or nato facilities in ukraine); and of course it appears that ukraine rolled a donut with these latest attacks, which would agree with what we've predicted in other threads about the difficulty of gathering and concentrating large groups undetected before contact even occurs; smaller units may have more of a chance in so called "shaping operations" but which by themselves do not or are not intended to achieve significant game changing results- so, something to consider for your steel beasts scenarios at least if simulating the current phase of the conflict

while it makes sense that generally the drones are intended for human operators, it is a one sided advantage for solitaire play that i would love to explore for computer parties against the player along with comouter operated mortars and on board MLRS units - notwithstanding all the usual caveats. furthernore- if im not mistaken the UAV camcopter is identified incorrectly in the documentation somewhere as a quadcopter- no functional difference, but i remember having trouble initially looking for the quadcopter when i initially learned how to add and use drones in SB before the realization occured

an over used trope which does not hold up here because it either does not know or show that this is a proxy war between nato and russia, not a war beteen ukraine and russia- it should cone as no surprise that that ukraine has held on this long because of nato and in particular american backing providing ukraine not only with weapons but information and disposition and location of russan forces. time and again this really did save ukraines bacon from the opening phase (since this war had already been going on since at least 2014 when tbe obama administration and select european partners overthrew the ukrainian government and installed a puppet during a coup, stoking the civil wat leading to the current phase of an ongoing conflict- of course you dont hear much at all in western press or from washington or london or brussels or berlin); western support has bern going on for years, or otherwise you dont see much success at all over breakaway regions by ukraines regular army; while russian information sources are obviously biased, so too is western discourse colossally manufactured probably making johnson- macnamara and vietnam era information domination look sheepish in comparison ( still of you believe some of the revelations from the leaked documents, a ukranian couter offensive is looking quite chancey, far from assured). we will see when the ground hardens come late spring and summer whether the war was really stalemated or whether the combatants were waiting for favorable conditions to maneuver

a general standardization and common requirements for ammunition and equipment in principle makes sense, the problem in my view is that nato's mission doesn't. stocks of sophisticated missiles depleted when nato insinuated itself in libya's civil war, which on the face of it had nothing to do with nato's mutual self defense charter but really the project of policy wonks in washington dc, signposted a little bit of what was to come in ukraine where, perhaps the cheaper but plentiful artillery guns and rockets fill the void while nato needs to find way to replenish more rare, expensive systems while for years western european states neglected their own defense in exchange for american poltical dominance- which is perhpas a major factor to add finland at this point but while ukraine's bid is out of the question for the time being

but also using mods- which is not a purist representation. many of us did, which is what i meant previously about engine limitations back then. don't get me wrong, i thought it was a great piece of software, but i also wanted it to progress. i still cannot understand the obsession that some users still have, but again, that is the way it is

because it is a wishlist thread, that is what has been occurring to me as of late understanding full well that a basic player request is only that- under a hypothetical scenario i would not have went so far as analysts intercepting voice or data transmissions and so on, but as much as could be imagined a more rudimentary model (as are some other things in steel beasts, eg, the way air strikes can scripted into scenarios but are not exactly full fidelity representations of a physical plane nor counter measures nor air defense nets coming into it), i would argue for a 'magic radar' with maybe user assigned chance for detection or evasion to abstract results somewhat, but which at least gives parties some urgency to relocating artillery after firing as well as imparting the challenge of locating the opponent's artillery. in other words, it is not really the technical process (assume all of that has been done already under the hood) so much as the results. of course it is all hypothetical for a wishlist thread and in my opinion just a good topic of discussion for its own sake

yes, finite resources are implied in any request- however that wasnt the explicit reason against it but that it was rather hinted that it might be technically overwhelming for consumers (and that is what lumituisku was driving at given the sandbox nature of steel beasts which scales with user preferences); in any case it goes without saying whatever happens is esim's decision. i proposed what i said because i do not believe it is a sideshow or some small event but the main act we are seeing now, at least in this phase. it really does appear this is what it looks like when two combatants have access to similar capabilities in long range missiles, artillery, precision munitions and real time capabilities to detect and fire on one another's positions more or less- something no one has really seen perhaps since the iran iraq war. this is why trench warfare suddenly returned and you see routinely these cat and mouse pursuits where parties are hunting one another's artillery, radar sites, air defense sites and vehicle concrerations. maybe this is calculated as outside the scope of the simulation for the investment of resouces, but any party would ignore as a fluke or a one off at their own peril. be that as it may, it is not my business decision to make, but i must respect where that comes from

i do not know- but then, that is a rhetorical question. the retort to that might be: granted, what happened came as a bit of a surprise to everyone that it turned into this, but how much can it be ignored given this IS what it is? maybe it would be better suited for your professional customers if accessibility is a problem for the consumer market, but if they arent requesting it, i suppose that is tbe answer

given lessons from current events where artllery and precision munitions characterize the nature of modern high intenity conflict, where positioning and repositioning naturally come from that as a result, steel beasts might arguably need to abstract some form of counter battery behavior, that is, perhaps at the very least a simplified representation of counter battery radar or more or less physical representation of mobile radar systems on the map as targets, which probably implies some automation of computer smartly displacing its own artillery units to compete against human players in real time (though i am sure this is hardly a trivial matter to develop, nevertheless, it does seem to be an essential matter with all the obvious caveats considered)

i believe that answers the question- but does that not mean therefore that the m1 vehicles will never 'cook off' as a visual effect?

there is an entry in the release notes re: the tendency for ammo brew up in the m1 was toned down; honestly i do not remember specifically when i last saw such a case in steel beasts in several years, perhaps once i can remember after an ICM strike on a destroyed M1. in the original steel beasts legacy i seem to recall this was much more common, with however the stipulation that the model in steel beasts didn't at the time have a condition where there was an ammo brew up compartmentalized to the turret storage while the vehicle still survived, since all vehicles are inherently destroyed with an ammo cook off- that is, there was no special case for the only tank in steel beasts back then which had a separate ammo storage from the crew. be that as it may, a computer T-90 hit my M1 ammunition store recently, and the program recorded the damage as an ammunition destruction, but the tank was otherwise operable and not destroyed. if esim doesn't mind the question, what sort of situation is this where the M1's ammo is destroyed, but doesn't cook off (a simplification of the model which isn't ready yet for an ambiguous condition of mission killed, but not exactly knocked out?) if i understand correctly, as far as ammunition damage is concerned there is no distinction between ready racks and semi-ready racks- if ammunition is 'damaged', the tank is reduced to zero main gun rounds in either case

do you mean that you have played both steel beasts gold and steel beasts pro and you prefer steal beasts gold? or does this mean you have never played steel beasts professional?

honestly it does not move me. it is not to say that it did not have its time and place, but even back then the player base was pining for more content. we saw the potential in it as basis for improvement, we bothered esim for it, and we have it now- not just visually, but functionally. if you like steel beasts gold, steel beasts pro personal edition is that and so much more. i cannot say what is driving relatively newer users to it more than the retro novelty of it, but i would think that over time, even they would eventually abandon the legacy iteration of steel beasts for the contemporary version

esim has my adulation for the new sound effects. combined with the visual improvements in this update - what a difference in user experience.

maybe this is useless feedback; as a solitaire player i do not remember the last time i heard anything this out of the ordinary before. maybe in multiplayer they do it all the time for all i know; however it seems like the AI in solo play is more aggressive with the autocannons- which might be the reason i noticed it now whereas MP users know about it already

the internal hit sound effect by autocannon seems to be the same as for a hit from a large caliber cannon or gun- that is, the user experiences a very loud chain of explosions even if buttoned up a tank. whether the bass turned up or using headphones- this is very loud and commanding - and is probably going to be intolerable unless the volume is turned off

outstanding graphics enhancement for daysight optics / reticles 👍

good point but i do not think it will do anything to affect the outcome of the war or even a particular operation. it will be the individual soldier's story in the trenches rather than something more than that. most projections seem to agree that ukraine for all practical purposes risks exhausting its ammunition stocks by summer, depending on how russia conducts the war, which russia seems to understand that it can simply outlast ukraine in the short term up to perhaps two years, which is the war it is prepared to fight. the russian economy is in a wartime production mode that in the short term nato economies are not configured to match- perhaps several months to several years to answer. i do not think ukraine has that much time. nato is looking for some silver bullet to drop in their laps mainly in the form of some kind of weapon that will change the outcome- certainly i do not think it will be a weapon system of any type that is going to do it, i.e., any particular infantry weapon or tank or aircraft. i think statements from general milley, us defense secretary austin and from nato secretary general stoltenberg are hiding what they know. they have to find some way of making the case for ammunition and weapons supplied to ukraine but without really admitting the reason why they are requesting it

bayonet charges are a red herring in my view- obviously that idea comes from the evolution of earlier firearms and warfare which were not what they are today but at the crossroads of the last of the armored troops and and infantry tactics which were still being worked out with these new weapons which were still inaccurate and slow loading and in some cases impractical (in the age of colonization and native warfare- an opponent might get off several arrows or close the distance for a muzzle loading black powder musket put into action, a bayonet was just as much a defensive weapon in this case in between cycles). as we know the organization and tactics available to the thinking at the time is that traditional warfare meant that armies would openly march out and face each other, and then bang bang and a line drops dead at 50 paces or whatever, and then once that happens one side or the other would charge. so this is obsolete and not to mention a stupid way to conduct warfare with modern weapons, if it was so even then. but you still see in modern situations bayonets serve as a useful tool for poking or prodding and the intimidation factor in order to pacify prisoners of war (which we still see to this day when they are being marched at bayonet point) or simply just simply adds to the intimidation factor in occupied zones or hot spots with local unrest- so in a way what you see for example with the french foreign legion the bayonet is both a traditional display of heraldry in their parades promoting espirit de corps, but also an intimidating image that is meant to convey business in the types of work they might do

we are seeing something new in this current mess in ukraine which has no previous comparisons- which is why i have been very skeptical about tank vs tank comparisons whether there is more or less parity between forces (both sides employ the same or similar soviet era equipment) or even if ukraine, equipped with superior western tanks attempts to close with russian formations using older equipment; the armored fighting vehicles are getting hit before they can bring their combat power into it; the battlespace is swarming with suicide drones, drones as artillery spotters, and the massive amounts of artillery and missiles (in some battles the russians completely eclipse the ukrainians- maybe has high as 10:1 in artillery pieces perhaps more or less), at any rate the amount of artillery rounds fired per day is phenomenal (just look at video and images of battlefields which look like something of the moonscapes out of world war I). the amount of artillery shells and rockets during all of ODS rivals what is being fired in just one day in this war and is even a fraction of that. this also doesn't address the toll mines are taking on equipment. it is nothing a western army certainly has experience with since the end of the cold war; so it's a matter of who adapts to this kind of warfare, meaning throwing away old assumptions if they are not working. from a steel beasts standpoint, the scenario you describe probably does not make for an interesting match, but in a kind of conflict you are seeing now, this is not working like that and has dire, real consequences- in fact what is going on is the russians will bait the ukrainians into expending resources, using up dwindling stocks of ammunition and committing units into a battle just so that they can shell them when they leave their redoubts. it's a catch-22: if the ukrainians dig in, they get shelled. if they move out from their fortifications, then they are rather exposed and get shelled and bombed. the russians have developed a sense of withdrawing from their own lines during a ukrainian attack- this gets reported as a ukrainian 'victory' in the press or in the briefing rooms of nato officials, but then what follows is where it gets vague- the ukrainians get bombed, shelled, what have you, then the russians encircled what's left of the ukrainian force- this is what the whole ukrainian offensive that stalled out in recent months has done because the russians did not play 'fair' in your scenario

my ideal configuration with hardware i have is a scenario with max visibility range at 6km, which plays reasonably fast, has nice grass details extended out far so as not to look too artificially barren, with lower rez screen resolution (sometimes as low as 1024 x 768 but no lower) midrange AA level and all other details maximized (shadows, high tracks, ground details), i'm willing to put up with lower screen resolutions and a max 6km viewing distance with great ground detail- thereby giving graphics which can reasonably look like the natural world but not playing too slow. i have a desktop from 2019 which does this for most scenarios i run that aren't too urbanized, i'm not a laptop user which is a harder hill to climb. it also produces better looking screenshots for the album than the purely 'performance' oriented configuration

that makes sense- although i have different preferences, i understand what you mean which really was my point from the beginning; an objective answer to the question becomes a little more personal and subjective when you examine what you are answering, because it usually means a tradeoff on personal preferences: the reduction of a slider will free up resources to dial up another- or conversely, to scale up one resource may need adjusting to turn down another since it is impacting the gameplay experience negatively depending on tastes

my point wasnt that ground clutter would not affect performance with low visibilty, but that low visibility would mean that there are less visible 'other than ground clutter' objects or terrain features rendered happening concurrently; in other words few if any of these settings happen on their own, they coincide and interact with one another, i.e., resolution and antialising options in and of themselves make no sense without the environmemt being rendered- which also depends on the details of the environment rendered as determined by the sliders and/or checkboxes

subjectively, it does not appear to me that the atmospheric effects of the FAE weapons against soft targets is modelled in steel beasts- that is, the specialized effects of high temperature / impulse experenced by human or lightly armored targets in the area are unaffected from my observations, rather, it is only the individual fragments which kill or incapacitate- since i have launched salvos directly on dismounts with no cover other than their knocked out vehicles surviving direct hits because the ko'd carriers were blocking airborne fragments, or entrenched infantry surviving direct hits more or less because they weren't in the line of sight of moving particles- if so mitigating the advantage of these types of weapons intended for that very purpose if they are treated as generic HE warhead

graphics settings will interact with one another so that you will find there isn't a single setting which objectively satisfies your criteria for acceptable frame rates. consider: the visible draw distance - which is not set in the graphics options but is set in the mission editor- might cripple performance at 18 km viewing area regardless of any other setting. ground cover settings likewise have been known to tax machine resources at higher settings, but won't have as much efect in a scenario where the visibilty is set to under 1 km, or in an urbanized environment (although that initself will introduce heavy calculations for a large, detailed city) - and this doesn't take into account yet your display resolution, which goes without saying will impact perfo brmance depending on how you would scale that (some users may prefer the trade of between higher resolutions and less anti-aliasing, others might go the other way). in sum, if your machine is somewhat older and framerates tend to be impacted, then perhaps a good rule of thumb is to adjust per the type of scenario you expect. generally though urbanized maps tend to have the nost impact before heavily forrested maps, ground clutter is also a setting to keep an eye on, but scenario view distance will modulate either one of these and will be perhaps one of the most influential settings which affects all other settings but for shadow mapping (which doesnt render visible shadows very far regardless) or the size of celestial objects (which is rather negligible as far as i estimate)