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priznat posted:Microprose sims were awesome. I liked M1 tank platoon a lot. Microprose was the poo poo. I remember playing F15 and Silent Service for loving HOURS on end. I actually found it and fired up my old C64 for the first time in years a few years back. It was more than a little disappointing. It's one of those things best left as a memory. 
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Nov 4, 2011 20:25
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slidebite posted:Microprose was the poo poo. I remember playing F15 and Silent Service for loving HOURS on end. Did you know you could exterminate all the friendly forces except for one base, land and rearm, wipe out *that* base, then land your helicopter at an enemy base? And only get some KP peeling potatos? It was also fun stooging around at like 15 feet on one engine (fuel economy), wiping all the enemy off the map and having to either fire FFARS unguided rockets or *really quickly* land when a HIND appeared - they could shoot through mountains, and usually hosed up your bird massively when they did. Although if you screwed up your password (copy protection) returning to base, you got one-shotted *really* good: every system that could be destroyed was, everything else was crippled. I wanted to bolt that weapon onto my bird and go hunting... This was all on the Commodore 64, by the way. I bought Gunship for the Amiga, but it had... issues, with untargetable/indestructable enemies. This would only be annoying, but as that particular infantry squad was a primary target... <sigh> and they were shooting back with MANPADS SAMS, too. Ygolonac fucked around with this message at 21:22 on Nov 4, 2011 |
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Nov 4, 2011 21:05
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M1TP2 and Gunship 2000 owned owned owned. F-14 Fleet Defender was also loving awesome.
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Nov 4, 2011 21:36
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Ygolonac posted:Don't forget the F-19 in Microprose's Stealth Fighter videogame. "'scuse me while I sneakily fly over the target airbase taking pictures, then Durendal it and make the photos immediately obsolete, and finish by flying back to Norway at 30 feet with a MIG-25 orbiting me the whole way. Wasn't there a Let's Play of the game somewhere? I didn't find anything in the LP archives, though I found a video of it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IorWtC1FyhQ
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Nov 4, 2011 21:45
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M1TP2 and Gunship 2000 owned owned owned. F-14 Fleet Defender was also loving awesome.
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Nov 4, 2011 22:02
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I was a big fan of Red Storm Rising, also microprose. Back when games were so complicated they came with keyboard overlays.
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Nov 4, 2011 22:42
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Those keyboard overlays ruled. And while Dynamix had a couple good games (Aces of the Pacific was great), MicroProse still was the king. On top of all their awesome sims they had stuff like Pirates!, Master of Orion, Civilization, X-Com.. Classic stuff.
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Nov 4, 2011 22:46
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I still play Red Storm Rising using dosbox
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Nov 4, 2011 23:03
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I'm having such a good time reading this thread!TheNakedJimbo posted:
The history of Israeli wars is a really good timeline of the NATO/Warsaw pact battle of air vs antiair supremacy. Like the yom kippur war showed that soviet anti air tech was clearly ahead of nato airpower. If the Egyptians hadn't left their anti air screen to try and help the poor syrians, it may have ended quite differently. iyaayas01 posted:
Totally agree with this post. The myth of magic Israeli might is really silly. What they did do was do a really good job at using superior technology and good training to crush poorly trained conscript armies with ridiculously territorial officer corps who wouldn't share information with their own fellow officers, for fear of losing some trump and the promotions and accolades that would follow. There is also a lot of praise for how amazing it is Israel could develop things like the merkava and other systems. But they are as wink wink appropriated as the Kfir. The Merkava is really just an abrams with a big passenger compartment and hatch in the back. And this goes for plenty of other indigenous Israeli military hardware. The plans are gifted to them, and they represent them as their own designs. Even if you're a big fan of Israel, you should understand that mythologizing their military is not a positive thing. The national morale shrank after Hezbollah embarrassed them in Lebanon, because the myth of Israeli invincibility was seriously bruised. Cyrano4747 posted:
Yeah, the problem with Arab officers vs Israel was poor strategy when things went badly, rather than some kind of broken robot stupidity. Also, small unit leadership and initiative was such a German invention that the US military is still trying to implement it, and is sort-of open about not achieving it Have you read that long stratfor paper about the failings of Arab armies? I have no idea how correct it is but it's pretty enlightening. I'd link it if I could find it Wooo airplanes! I like em big and full of cargo and guys!
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Nov 4, 2011 23:44
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The Israelis are so uncomfortable with how they did recently in Lebanon and Gaza that they've begun not to doubt their army but to doubt their own soldiers as a bunch oh spoiled brats. See Israel didn't fail to accomplish because the military isn't what people think it is but because Israeli kids are lazy what with their baggy pants and loud music.
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Nov 5, 2011 00:29
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How is a Merkava "really just an abrams"? The engine type is different, the engine location is different, the suspension is different, the transmission is different, the armour is different.. True, it does have tracks and is fairly resistant to being exploded by RPGs.. priznat fucked around with this message at 00:35 on Nov 5, 2011 |
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Nov 5, 2011 00:33
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Tying together two discussions in this thread, the original Microprose Gunship manual made a point of discussing just how different the Merk was from most western tank designs.
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Nov 5, 2011 00:40
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They do both have 120mm smoothbores (in the most recent models) but they're both based off designs by ZE CHERMANS
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Nov 5, 2011 00:42
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Flikken posted:Sheridan. I saw this thread and thought to ask my stepfather about the Sheridan, he was with the 199th infantry brigade that got some of the first ones deployed to Vietnam. He got to see the Shillelagh demonstrated at Fort Knox, but never saw a missile in 'Nam. Even with the derp gun loaded with 152mm canister  rounds, and snug inside an armored turret, my stepdad said he felt safer on an M113 APC, which his armored cav unit basically used as recon war wagons. Plus due to the caseless ammo used on the Sheridan, they were prohibited from smoking inside the tank and around them which was probably as much a downer as any of it's other technical problems. Turns out the tank he was normally on got hit by an RPG and did burn up quick as has been reported to happen, luckily he was on leave at the time but except for some shrapnel to the driver the crew got out relatively unscathed. By drawing straws he also got out of escorting a supply run that resulted in a predicted ambush and death of William Bond, the only general lost to ground combat in Vietnam. Like McNamara said: "Cold War? Hell, it was a hot war!" Styles Bitchley fucked around with this message at 01:37 on Nov 5, 2011 |
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Nov 5, 2011 01:34
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priznat posted:Those keyboard overlays ruled. And while Dynamix had a couple good games (Aces of the Pacific was great), MicroProse still was the king. Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe wasn't Microprose.
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Nov 5, 2011 03:01
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priznat posted:They do both have 120mm smoothbores (in the most recent models) but they're both based off designs by ZE CHERMANS Originally both the m1 and the meek had 105s
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Nov 5, 2011 03:08
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Cyrano4747 posted:FTFY. "Aces of/over [place]" pretty much defined my childhood. A-10 Warthog was the heat. gently caress you, Soviet armor, enjoy some Mavericks and 30mm DU. WEREWAIF posted:The history of Israeli wars is a really good timeline of the NATO/Warsaw pact battle of air vs antiair supremacy. Like the yom kippur war showed that soviet anti air tech was clearly ahead of nato airpower. If the Egyptians hadn't left their anti air screen to try and help the poor syrians, it may have ended quite differently. It's been mentioned before, but the deployment of the Sagger ATGMs and SA-6s in combat and the subsequent effects scared the poo poo out of the U.S./NATO and drove/accelerated the development of some pretty major systems (Chobham armor/Abrams in the case of the Sagger, Have Blue and increased EW development in the case of the SA-6, although to be fair Vietnam and the SA-2 had already jumpstarted that development, the SA-6 just kicked it up a notch). Of course, within a decade, this happened, so I'd argue it's fair to say that the Israelis figured out how to deal with Soviet SAMs (82-0 is a pretty good scoreboard.)
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Nov 5, 2011 03:11
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Smiling Jack posted:I still play Red Storm Rising using dosbox I had no idea you could do this, fantastic.
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Nov 5, 2011 08:38
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Jane's Fighters Anthology for life.
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Nov 5, 2011 16:42
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WEREWAIF posted:Have you read that long stratfor paper about the failings of Arab armies? I have no idea how correct it is but it's pretty enlightening. I'd link it if I could find it http://www.unc.edu/depts/diplomat/AD_Issues/amdipl_17/articles/deatkine_arabs1.html grover fucked around with this message at 01:57 on Nov 6, 2011 |
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Nov 5, 2011 17:08
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priznat posted:Microprose sims were awesome. I liked M1 tank platoon a lot. Was this out for the C64? I remember a tank sim for the C64 where, in my M2, I could win most any battle by popping smoke and turning on my thermal sights. I was literally invulnerable. Also, Bard's Tale.
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Nov 5, 2011 18:03
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Phanatic posted:Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe wasn't Microprose. That was Lucasarts, right?
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Nov 5, 2011 18:30
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Scratch Monkey posted:That was Lucasarts, right? Yeah, they also made Battle Of Britain which was quite a fun sim that let you fly everything from Hurricanes to Ju-87s to Do-17s
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Nov 5, 2011 18:40
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Flanker posted:Jane's Fighters Anthology for life. I never had any friends who played, let alone heard of, FA or the games it was a compilation of. I thought I owned the only copy in the world.
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Nov 5, 2011 18:45
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Boomerjinks posted:I never had any friends who played, let alone heard of, FA or the games it was a compilation of. I thought I owned the only copy in the world. Ask yourself: are they really your friends?
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Nov 5, 2011 18:50
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Flanker posted:Jane's Fighters Anthology for life. FA owns so hard. To go back to the F-19 discussion on the past page, it was also used effectively by Tom Clancy (lol) in Red Storm Rising as the plot device that allows the proud Christian forces of America to stop the invasion of the godless Communist pig-swine.
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Nov 5, 2011 19:09
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movax posted:FA owns so hard. As Jesus intended.
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Nov 5, 2011 19:10
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Oxford Comma posted:As Jesus intended. Indeed. I've been meaning to put up a thread mocking Clancy for a few months now in GiP; I've got the OP like half-written. I had recently re-read all the Clancy books for the first-time since I was younger, and holy poo poo do they read differently when you're 21 instead of 12.
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Nov 5, 2011 19:14
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movax posted:Indeed. I've been meaning to put up a thread mocking Clancy for a few months now in GiP; I've got the OP like half-written. I had recently re-read all the Clancy books for the first-time since I was younger, and holy poo poo do they read differently when you're 21 instead of 12. Do it. I've also had the epiphany of re-reading these 'books'!
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Nov 5, 2011 19:25
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Flanker posted:Jane's Fighters Anthology for life. Jane's USAF was the poo poo. Until another game lets me relive the fighter part of Air Force One I refuse to believe differently.
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Nov 5, 2011 19:28
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Clancy's Frisbee honestly could have been a worse guess before stealth tech was public. It did go supersonic, but just barely if I remember. It handled like a pig, and it didn't take long for the Soviets to start counteracting it. I mean, if we can lose a real F-117 to lazy strike planning, I think Soviets in a war would figure something out. Which isn't to say there wasn't plenty of general MERICA  to go around in that book.
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Nov 5, 2011 21:57
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DeesGrandpa posted:Jane's USAF was the poo poo. Until another game lets me relive the fighter part of Air Force One I refuse to believe differently. A buddy and I used to have Air Force One fights, where we'd play chicken or chase each other through high rise buildings.
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Nov 5, 2011 21:59
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Loving this thread. The cold war is such a goldmine of creations that are effectively fantasy. The things which got built rarely saw action, and thus tend to fall out of memory. Here's a great example of the era when prop planes were close to being phased out, but got pushed to ridiculously powerful extremes. I give you the Fairey Gannet! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairey_Gannet  Contra-rotating props, nearly 4000 hp, and a third cockpit because why not.  It was designed as a carrier borne anti-submarine strike craft. Here it is with a massive radar in its belly.  Being designed for carrier duty also meant it had folding wings. Booyah.
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Nov 6, 2011 10:41
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Alaan posted:Clancy's Frisbee honestly could have been a worse guess before stealth tech was public. It did go supersonic, but just barely if I remember. It handled like a pig, and it didn't take long for the Soviets to start counteracting it. I mean, if we can lose a real F-117 to lazy strike planning, I think Soviets in a war would figure something out. I think you're misremembering... The things went supersonic, carried enough missiles and bombs to fight their way to and from a target, and I honestly dont remember the soviets countering them. They were a deus ex machina
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Nov 6, 2011 11:49
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thesurlyspringKAA posted:I think you're misremembering... The things went supersonic, carried enough missiles and bombs to fight their way to and from a target, and I honestly dont remember the soviets countering them. They were a deus ex machina I remember them bombing enough bridges to hold the Soviet advance, though it has been many years since I've read Red Storm Rising.
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Nov 6, 2011 12:38
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Clancy wrote two good books: Red October and Red Storm Rising. It was all downhill after that.
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Nov 6, 2011 12:43
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Scratch Monkey posted:Clancy wrote two good books: Red October and Red Storm Rising. It was all downhill after that. I dunno, I liked "The Sum of All Fears" for all of it's insanity and I still like "Debt of Honor" for the US not being ontop all at once and of course the craziest ending of all time.
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Nov 6, 2011 13:01
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thesurlyspringKAA posted:I think you're misremembering... The things went supersonic, carried enough missiles and bombs to fight their way to and from a target, and I honestly dont remember the soviets countering them. They were a deus ex machina IIRC they were slightly supersonic capable (which given the posited planform of the F-19 at the time wasn't out of the question; remember that it was written a few years before the F-117 was acknowledged), but they didn't have a very extensive loadout (only a couple LGBs with a couple short range Sidewinders for self defense), and I distinctly remember them being vulnerable to the Soviet air defenses...not on the initial night of the war, which was kind of the whole point since they were (in the book) supposed to be double super top secret and were therefore a completely new type of threat for the Soviets to counter, but shortly after that the Soviets developed somewhat effective countermeasures and began shooting them down in fairly significant numbers...the last vignette in the book discussing the F-19 pilot is him briefly reflecting on all his buddies that have been shot down right before he himself is shot down and subsequently captured right as the cease fire is being signed. They definitely weren't a deux ex machina, except possibly on the first night of the war, but like I just said that was kind of the whole point of having top secret weapons technology that the adversary knows nothing about. Red Storm Rising really isn't that bad of a book...there are some pretty glaring MURICA type things, but a lot of the book has good points. As I discussed previously, while a war in Europe staying conventional was a somewhat unrealistic proposition (less so once the introduction of AirLand Battle), the scenario they outlined in the book was the most realistic possible, and given the point of the book they kind of had to keep it conventional. At the tactical level two things that stood out to me were the vulnerability of the Apaches (borne out by the experience in Desert Storm, the Balkans, and OIF) and the relative toughness of the A-10 (again, borne out in Desert Storm, the Balkans, and OIF), as well as the higher than expected expenditure rate of PGMs (borne out in every conflict the U.S. has fought from Desert Storm on). Here's what I wrote before about it: quote:Like I've said earlier in the thread, that was true until the 1980s when AirLand Battle came out. At that point NATO started to think in terms of fighting a conventional war without immediately resorting to nukes. The scenario in Red Storm Rising is possible, just improbable. I think something that hasn't been mentioned is that in the book there are a bunch of Spetznaz teams in place in Western Europe to hit various NATO C3I facilities on the opening night of the war. One of them gets compromised (if I remember correctly the team leader gets hit by a bus or something and spills his guts after being interrogated while still drugged up from treatment) and NATO has about 48 hours notice to begin mobilization and planning.
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Nov 6, 2011 13:30
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thesurlyspringKAA posted:I think you're misremembering... The things went supersonic, carried enough missiles and bombs to fight their way to and from a target, and I honestly dont remember the soviets countering them. They were a deus ex machina They were stealthy from look down radars and their attrition rate was actually really high. Hell the squadron commander and his WSO got shot down near the end of the book. so they basically had to fly REALLY low to be useful and they were still vulnerable. Edit: gently caress beaten Flikken fucked around with this message at 13:36 on Nov 6, 2011 |
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Nov 6, 2011 13:32
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Scratch Monkey posted:Clancy wrote two good books: Red October and Red Storm Rising. It was all downhill after that. And Red Storm Rising was written in large parts by Larry Bond. In effect, it was the first "Tom Clancy" Book.
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Nov 6, 2011 13:38
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