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JaucheCharly posted:I just googled 1632 series. Somebody makes real money of this? Multiple dozen people, actually, via the fanfiction. Personally? Yeah, OK, I get why the real historians look down on the 1632 series. And why it's probably not great literature. But it doesn't have to be great, it just has to be good. And it is that, fairly consistently. It's...Look, it's the literary equivalent of macaroni and cheese. Not exactly healthy, but it's comfort food. (Also, Baen makes their whole catalog available, free, to disabled readers in Kindle/Nook/etc formats. I am one of the people who benefits by it - Baen's program lets me stretch my SSI checks a lot farther and lets me keep up my reading habit, which is sometimes my only real entertainment source. It also makes me wish other publishers (especially of Scifi/Fantasy) would do the same thing, because it's not like they lose much in sales (yes, they do verify that you're disabled - I got into it with a letter from my voc rehab counselor saying I was blind), and it *does* get books out there. I don't just read, I *frequently* loan copies to friends looking for stuff to read, and I'm not alone in that.)
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Jun 12, 2014 15:58
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ArchangeI posted:He is fighting incredibly exaggerated villains, too. Soviet WW2 generals were tragic characters, in general (npi), what with having to cope with unforgiving enemies on both sides of the front. Rokossovosky was no exception. was tortured by Stalin ---> saved Stalin's rear end came from a Polish aristocratic family ---> supervised Poland as Stalin's stooge, despised by his countrymen Meanwhile dumbass assholes like Kliment Voroshilov can gently caress up everything they do and still expect forgiveness from Stalin. Including playing an important role in the Red Army purges, then complaining that Stalin's purges made the army so ineffective during Winter War! Nenonen fucked around with this message at 16:09 on Jun 12, 2014 |
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Jun 12, 2014 16:07
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He'd make cool material for an HBO series, I think.
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Jun 12, 2014 16:09
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JaucheCharly posted:I just googled 1632 series. Somebody makes real money of this? Given that few people in America even know the Thirty Years War was a thing, it's just plain nice to see anything involving the era, no matter how pulpy and cheesy. Plus it does, on occasion, actually explain why some things were the way they were, like when some Americans go "lol close-order formation and brightly-colored uniforms are dumb, why not use skirmish order and camo" and then they try it and officers can't see poo poo and cavalry whup their infantry. Granted, this was illustrated in a war game and not actual battle so it's not like it was a good narrative moment when the Americans really suffered a loss or anything, but still.
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Jun 12, 2014 17:30
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Ofaloaf posted:Given that few people in America even know the Thirty Years War was a thing, it's just plain nice to see anything involving the era, no matter how pulpy and cheesy. Plus it does, on occasion, actually explain why some things were the way they were, like when some Americans go "lol close-order formation and brightly-colored uniforms are dumb, why not use skirmish order and camo" and then they try it and officers can't see poo poo and cavalry whup their infantry. I do remember they suffer a loss when they invade poland because the rain makes their flintlock rifles ineffective and the poles use their advantage of cavalry to rout them.
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Jun 12, 2014 17:37
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They should have used cocktail umbrellas to guard the frizzen.
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Jun 12, 2014 17:44
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Nenonen posted:came from a Polish aristocratic family ---> supervised Poland as Stalin's stooge, despised by his countrymen He jailed, murdered or otherwise persecuted some 200 000 Poles, mostly pre-war officers and members of anti-Nazi resistance movements, so I guess that "despised" part has some more grounding than just his association with Stalin? (Also he was for all intents and purposes less of a Pole than Nietzsche was.)
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Jun 12, 2014 17:47
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Chillyrabbit posted:I do remember they suffer a loss when they invade poland because the rain makes their flintlock rifles ineffective and the poles use their advantage of cavalry to rout them. Do you mean matchlocks, or is the book that bad? Ofaloaf posted:Given that few people in America even know the Thirty Years War was a thing, it's just plain nice to see anything involving the era, no matter how pulpy and cheesy. Plus it does, on occasion, actually explain why some things were the way they were, like when some Americans go "lol close-order formation and brightly-colored uniforms are dumb, why not use skirmish order and camo" and then they try it and officers can't see poo poo and cavalry whup their infantry. Except for this guy. This guy is god drat on this poo poo.  "OK, we're 'orange,' so we're all going to need to find some orange fabric and make at least a sash or something. You think you can do that?" "You have no idea how ready I am for this moment." HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 18:10 on Jun 12, 2014 |
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Jun 12, 2014 17:52
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HEY GAL posted:Do you mean matchlocks, or is the book that bad? Another theme which I thought was nice was the realization by the Americans of the small town that ended up there that they simply did not have the resources and facilities to replicate all their modern amenities, so pretty quickly the challenge became figuring out how far they needed to gear down to be able to build stuff with the knowledge and skills they did have. Folks opted to build telegraph lines, for example, instead of trying to become the new Alexander Graham Bell because the training and tech needed to maintain the switching centers, operators, etc. was a big pain in the rear end, but telegraph wires were far easier to put up (and rebuild after raiding parties come through) and so they opted for that.
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Jun 12, 2014 18:04
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HEY GAL posted:Do you mean matchlocks, or is the book that bad? By the time the series starts, everyones using matchlocks. But much of the series is all 'rah rah, build a better society together'. That's not just 'American way! liberty!11!', it's also 'if we provide the 17th-century people with information, they're more than smart and capable enough to make use of it'. Which means that three years in, they've got flintlock making to the point where they can reliable equip regiments. Probably not realistic, but at least it doesn't go 'lol, past people r dumb'. It's pulpy and silly, but not a total trainwreck. Or at least, I don't know the era well enough to be annoyed at all the things they get wrong. Caustic Soda fucked around with this message at 18:10 on Jun 12, 2014 |
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Jun 12, 2014 18:08
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You weren't tortured with german baroque literature and the 30yw it in school. I'm not looking down on pop-culture books or that sort of thing if they have enlightening value like that. It's more like, well, if somebody can make a living with that, maybe there's no need to worry.HEY GAL posted:Except for this guy. This guy is god drat on this poo poo. If the guys look like that, how do the prostitutes look? Power Khan fucked around with this message at 18:12 on Jun 12, 2014 |
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Jun 12, 2014 18:10
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Tevery Best posted:He jailed, murdered or otherwise persecuted some 200 000 Poles, mostly pre-war officers and members of anti-Nazi resistance movements, so I guess that "despised" part has some more grounding than just his association with Stalin? Well, hence the HBO series. Rokossovsky was persecuted as potentially disloyal, but perhaps at the end of the day, he was actually fanatically loyal - beyond the bounds of reason. The contrast is strange really, because he would have seen first hand what a poo poo Stalin was, and throughout the war appeared to be a relatively humane leader who cared about his men, but he acted to uphold the system above all at the end of the day. Whereas Zhukov, who was spared from the Purges, in many senses Stalin's golden boy, and noted for his ruthlessness, would after the war fall out with Stalin and collaborate with Khrushchev to work against Beria and other conservative elements within the party. It seems like he acted to soften the Russian occupation of Germany as well.
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Jun 12, 2014 18:12
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HEY GAL posted:Do you mean matchlocks, or is the book that bad? They introduced the flintlock as "up time" knowledge which is probably very possible at that time period as snaphances were made. They did have some percussion caps at that point in time when invading poland but in limited availability and mostly for breech loader sharps which may be stretching the accelerated technology a bit.
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Jun 12, 2014 18:14
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JaucheCharly posted:If the guys look like that, how do the prostitutes look? 
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Jun 12, 2014 18:20
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HEY GAL posted:Probably less fancy, this dude is loving fierce. Look at his sassy little high heels! They match his garters and his sash, both of which match his flag. Really ties it together, perfect combat wear for summer or spring. It sounds like one of those goofy folk rituals you described in the thread earlier. "My SWAG protects me from gunfire!"
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Jun 12, 2014 19:03
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HEY GAL posted:Except for this guy. This guy is god drat on this poo poo. My lord doth protestant too much.
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Jun 12, 2014 19:15
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Hey,Iron Felix was also a noble. I've got a book of stories about him written in Stalin era, the transcend lovely into awesome!
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Jun 12, 2014 19:27
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Chillyrabbit posted:They introduced the flintlock as "up time" knowledge which is probably very possible at that time period as snaphances were made. They did have some percussion caps at that point in time when invading poland but in limited availability and mostly for breech loader sharps which may be stretching the accelerated technology a bit. Yeah, that is at least somewhat believable. A lot of the techniques existed or were close to existing, and all they would really have needed to do was to show the guys how to build the stuff more efficiently. Whats crazy is David Weber's series going from triremes to ironclads in 10 years.
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Jun 12, 2014 19:33
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HEY GAL posted:Probably less fancy, this dude is loving fierce. Look at his sassy little high heels! They match his garters and his sash, both of which match his flag. Really ties it together, perfect combat wear for summer or spring. Ok, I get it. So it's like that?  or more like that? 
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Jun 12, 2014 19:37
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More like this. http://aliendovecote.com/uploads/twine/kesha.html
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Jun 12, 2014 19:42
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HEY GAL posted:Do you mean matchlocks, or is the book that bad? Meh, that's about how you're average retarded football fan still dresses these days over here. Guy could go to a football match and no one would notice.
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Jun 12, 2014 19:50
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The proportion of money that this guy spent on his outfit is probably the equivalent of 10 years pay (or rather SS) of your average football fan.
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Jun 12, 2014 19:58
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So rather than continue to stink up this thread with crap about Alternate history I've thrown together a new thread Here if people are interested in it.
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Jun 12, 2014 20:03
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JaucheCharly posted:The proportion of money that this guy spent on his outfit is probably the equivalent of 10 years pay (or rather SS) of your average football fan. Yeah, the Kerls would have looked like this, on a good day: 
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Jun 12, 2014 20:58
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Anyone here familiar with William F. Owen's old man rant against the very idea of an Infantry Fighting Vehicle?"Wrong Technology for the Wrong Tactics" posted:Previously in this article we asked whether the weapons carried by an IFV made it more likely that it would defeat the enemy compared to an APC. Naturally, an unsupported attack conducted solely by IFVs is more likely to succeed than the same attack conducted by APCs. Even more simply, an IFV with a turret-mounted 30mm cannon and ATGM is far more likely to damage a target than an APC armed only with a machinegun. That capability comes at substantial cost, both in terms of procurement and training. The idea that an IFV crew are merely infantrymen with another skill-set is as sound as suggesting the same for a tank crew. Within the scope of a campaign they are more likely to be dedicated to employing the vehicle they crew. You have to register to see the full article, but its free and easy to do so. Personally, I think he's right. This particular old man makes a pretty convincing argument.
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Jun 12, 2014 21:11
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Filippo Corridoni posted:Anyone here familiar with William F. Owen's old man rant against the very idea of an Infantry Fighting Vehicle? Quick, someone post pentagon_wars.flv
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Jun 12, 2014 21:15
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StashAugustine posted:Quick, someone post pentagon_wars.flv As you wish. Behold!
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Jun 12, 2014 21:17
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Filippo Corridoni posted:Anyone here familiar with William F. Owen's old man rant against the very idea of an Infantry Fighting Vehicle? People have been taking on the IFV concept for quite a while now. In fact they made a movie about that fight: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXQ2lO3ieBA I understand the point about an IFV fundamentally being a compromise between an APC and a MBT, and there are many good points to be made about that. On the flip side, if you look at the wars we've been having in the Middle East, we find that for the most part we aren't using MBTs or APCs: We've been using up-armored HMMVWs, Strykers and MRAPS - heavily armed vehicles that can take hits, set up a strong point, and then maneuver troops on the battlefield. In a word: Infantry Fighting Vehicles. But there's plenty of room to debate the issue. Kaal fucked around with this message at 21:24 on Jun 12, 2014 |
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Jun 12, 2014 21:20
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Kaal posted:People have been taking on the IFV concept for quite a while now. In fact they made a movie about that fight:
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Jun 12, 2014 21:22
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None of those vehicles are actually IFVs, though. Maybe when/if they start deploying cannons on RWSs, you could call them that?
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Jun 12, 2014 21:29
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HEY GAL posted:Does this mean everyone's like...dragoons now? Certainly mechanized infantry are the successors of dragoons. The era of tanks blitzkrieging across the fields followed by mechanized infantry pushing forward on a single front seems to be over. By the time the tanks get onto the field, the jets and drones have already destroyed the organized resistance. Whether we're talking about the Gulf Wars or Afghanistan, or even non-American conflicts like Syria or South Ossetia, it's become fairly apparent that vehicles can't simply rely on their mobility anymore - they can't dart back and forth between the "front lines" and the home bases. As such they need a certain degree of armor and firepower, which means that you need an IFV-equivalent. The Merry Marauder posted:None of those vehicles are actually IFVs, though. Maybe when/if they start deploying cannons on RWSs, you could call them that? They aren't called IFVs, but they're certainly being used as if they were. You didn't see a lot of Iraq convoy commanders pulling their APCs out of the line and sending them to the rear. Mostly because if they did that then they'd probably trigger more IEDs. Kaal fucked around with this message at 21:44 on Jun 12, 2014 |
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Jun 12, 2014 21:34
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I look forward to HEMTTs with RHA and a couple missiles and a Bushmaster on top.
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Jun 12, 2014 21:41
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BMP was designed during a special era for a special job. Bradley was specifically designed to line the wallets of arms manufacturers and did that well. We may be living a post-BMP era but either we never lived a Bradley era or we shall always live it.
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Jun 12, 2014 21:48
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Filippo Corridoni posted:Anyone here familiar with William F. Owen's old man rant against the very idea of an Infantry Fighting Vehicle? This seems like the old tank destroyers debate again. The problem is that in a war, you don't get to decide whether you have a MBT or an IFV or an APC or not. You have what you have there at the time. You just can't rely on having a MBT around all the time. When you get into an ambush or are constrained in terms of logistics or need to hit somewhere as fast as possible, you can either fight with unarmed APCs or fit some guns on them and have them be IFVs... and modern military experience suggests that the latter is a huge force multiplier. And also half the time you are fighting enemies with low anti armour capability, for whom an IFV performs equivalently to a MBT.
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Jun 12, 2014 21:50
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Fangz posted:When you get into an ambush or are constrained in terms of logistics or need to hit somewhere as fast as possible, you can either fight with unarmed APCs or fit some guns on them and have them be IFVs... and modern military experience suggests that the latter is a huge force multiplier. This is a false choice. APCs have been armed since the half-track. They do not become IFVs if they fire their weapons or are in contact before they have unloaded.
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Jun 12, 2014 21:58
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The Merry Marauder posted:This is a false choice. APCs have been armed since the half-track. They do not become IFVs if they fire their weapons or are in contact before they have unloaded. The difference between the APC and the IFV, as far as I understand it, is a matter of degree of armament, and whether they support the infantry or not. I don't see what is wrong with my point. In a situation where 'bring in a MBT' is not an option, the vehicle that carried the infantry there can either contribute firepower or it can run away.
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Jun 12, 2014 22:06
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What's wrong is that no one is advocating for "unarmed APCs?" Are you saying that 7.62 NATO or .50 cal MGs or AGLs etc are insufficient for fire support, and that all troop carrying vehicles should be more heavily armed? What does "fit[ting] some guns on them" entail?
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Jun 12, 2014 22:17
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The Merry Marauder posted:I look forward to HEMTTs with RHA and a couple missiles and a Bushmaster on top. We're part of the way there already. 
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Jun 12, 2014 22:30
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The Merry Marauder posted:What's wrong is that no one is advocating for "unarmed APCs?" Are you saying that 7.62 NATO or .50 cal MGs or AGLs etc are insufficient for fire support, and that all troop carrying vehicles should be more heavily armed? What does "fit[ting] some guns on them" entail? I am saying that there is justification for a class of vehicles that carry troops and also weapons, yes, and that in general the autocannons vehicles like the Warrior IFV carry are more potent in a fire support role than HMGs on an APC, especially if APC doctrine demands that the APC withdraw from contact. I think you are too fixated on my use of the word 'unarmed', which was a mistake. The fundamental disagreement I have with the original article is quote:Having vehicles designed to carry infantry engage in direct combat is bad tactics. Which is wrong because it's not something commanders can choose. I think that's a more interesting thing to discuss than the more pedantic argument of whether armoured vehicles carrying infantry should have armament >= 20mm or not. Fangz fucked around with this message at 22:40 on Jun 12, 2014 |
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Jun 12, 2014 22:30
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The Merry Marauder posted:I look forward to HEMTTs with RHA and a couple missiles and a Bushmaster on top. The guntruck has a long and proud history of grunt innovation.
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Jun 12, 2014 22:33
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