|
Beerdeer posted:And now the discussion is about fascist gear in the forum about Trad Gaming One of the big problems with gaming is that it presents the "on paper" stats of things without giving any sort of practical understanding. If you look at the "in game" stats of German stuff - tanks, u-boats, infantry etc. - they look really good. You can see how this feeds the Wehraboo "omg the German stuff was so good/German engineering" myth. When you look at any of their stuff up close the myth of "efficiency" gets dispelled rather quickly. The tanks were overly complicated, broke down constantly, and couldn't be retrieved and rebuilt because they didn't think tank retrievers were a priority. The u-boats were cobbled together with flammable wood paneling and poor welds done by slave laborers. The infantry gear is overly complicated and expensive garbage. And it's like this for everything they built. But that isn't reflected in a tactical level wargame, so the German crap gets a reputation that is entirely undeserved.
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2019 21:52
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 9, 2024 20:31 |
|
|
Z the IVth posted:Isn't the same thing true of the stuff coming out of the US MIC these days as well? I was a Marine myself in the 80's/90s. Nothing - NOTHING - I saw was as flat out bad as the German stuff. I'll also point out that the German infantry gear is terrible when compared with contemporary Soviet or US stuff. Z the IVth posted:Presumably the Nazis did it for dumb ideological reasons rather than flat out corruption? They had plenty of both.
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2019 21:54
|
|
|
A lot of German WW2 design seems built in a way that in perfect circumstances they would be super effective and scary. Ignoring that whole reality bit where things break and need maintenance, etc.
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2019 21:58
|
|
|
Shockingly, the assumption that Nazi stuff must have been good is not limited to tabletop wargaming. For decades the medical community assumed that the stuff the Nazis got from the camps was worthwhile, but horrifically unethical to obtain. Eventually a Holocaust survivor (and doctor) decided he was sick of hearing that and performed a survey of all recovered data from the Nazi medical "experiments." Turns out it was pretty much all worthless.
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2019 22:05
|
|
|
Halloween Jack posted:I also forgot about their anti-tank weapons. I've read that the best Soviet anti-tank weapons were stolen German ones, though I don't know if that's true. If you mean the panzerfaust, the Soviets didn't really have any kind of equivalent, period; they demanded an AT rifle replacement that did everything an AT rifle did but better, and bazooka/panzerfaust type things lack the range and utility of being a big rifle, and generally have backblast issues AT Rifles don't. It's not really "the best" so much as "the only". If you're looking at proper antitank guns though the ZIS-2 says hi (for anyone who's not a nerd, it got retired at the start of the war because of numerous accounts from the front of it blasting holes straight through enemy tanks without actually damaging anything inside; it was ludicrously overgunned for 1941). Z the IVth posted:Isn't the same thing true of the stuff coming out of the US MIC these days as well? Little of column A... Cessna posted:When you look at any of their stuff up close the myth of "efficiency" gets dispelled rather quickly. The tanks were overly complicated, broke down constantly, and couldn't be retrieved and rebuilt because they didn't think tank retrievers were a priority. And yet, they won't count a tank as "dead" until they can't, theoretically, drag it back, with the tows they don't have... Cessna posted:Unfortunately, in an interview on today's podcast of No Dice No Glory Pete Simunovich (one of their writers) revealed that the Waffen SS are getting their own book for v4. It's apparently because of plastic issues that made them split the books, but, god, guys. I saw the Key and Peele "Racist, or really need to tell you something?" interview the other day, and I feel like someone really needs to tell Battlefront something sometimes.
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2019 22:06
|
|
|
Liquid Communism posted:They had good handguns too, although the best of them was the Hi-Powers they made in occupied Belgium, which was designed for the French by John Browning in 1927. The Luger is the iconic handgun, and is a nice pistol, but like Cessna notes about the rest of their gear, it is absurdly over-engineered and a huge pain in the rear end in the field. The Hi-Power wasn't really a Nazi weapon. They used it but so did literally every major army. It's essentially a modern handgun and was miles ahead of most other stuff at the time.
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2019 22:10
|
|
|
Eox posted:It's interesting and potentially useful information, "Superior engineering" is the first line any crypto-fash is going to throw at you. Precision made to a terrible design... I kinda love the Nazi obsession with super weapons like the Ratte and Maus because it's clear they never thought through the practicalities of what they were doing. In a way they get defeated by their own stupidity because they waste their time and energy on impractical bullshit instead of anything that would actually help them win the war. Similarly their higher ups were full of idiot yes men who were no good at their jobs, and they actively sabotaged themselves by forcing their prisoners to do vital construction work and stuff (thus the people who hated them would intentionally do sub-par jobs).
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2019 22:10
|
|
|
PinheadSlim posted:I've been thinking of other fictional fascist groups to paint little Germans as. I just spotted this one, and, personally, if it's a good paint job, or even a mediocre one that's been carried out with enthusiasm, I love that poo poo. I'm never going to be a person who won't play with people because of their models*, because hey, hobbies are time-expensive and the world is time-poor, but I'm always going to prefer playing the guy with the Hail Hydra SS over the guy with a bunch of plastic-grey germans on battlefront-brown bases. That said, there are definitely people who will at least claim loudly on the internet that they'd curl their lips and immediately disembark from the establishment, cursing it's name for allowing churlish plebians to intrude 'pon it. I don't get those people; or, at least, I don't get why those people are playing hollywood-WW2 (or cold war or...) rulesets like Flames and BA in club/FLGS pickup settings and expecting everyone to go with perfect historical accuracy. If it's at your house and you've invited me over to replay the defence of Kursk with historically correct or even themed lists, sure, that'd be rude to bring the Pink Panther to, but I don't know a lot of people who do that, and I know a lot of people who at least claim to moan at people at FLGSes about how their tanks are green and not green-grey. I don't get those people and I'd probably just try and avoid them. It's a much worse thing to bring to a game night than to have than a wolfenstein themed german army. *Thread theme excepted 
spectralent fucked around with this message at 22:16 on Apr 30, 2019 |
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2019 22:13
|
|
|
NovemberMike posted:The Hi-Power wasn't really a Nazi weapon. They used it but so did literally every major army. It's essentially a modern handgun and was miles ahead of most other stuff at the time. That's the point I was making. The best functioning handguns they had weren't their design, and were manufactured in occupied Belgium under threat of violence rather than by Germany.
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2019 22:13
|
|
|
Halloween Jack posted:Did they have anything that was genuinely good besides the MG42? depends, it's my impression german support vehicles like jeeps had genuinely good performance reputations by all accounts as far as i'm aware however due to the insane german procurement/requisition system there were about a zillion essentially custom variants running around: each uniquely designed by a different company, each requiring their own unique spare parts/tools, each requiring specialist mechanical knowledge to maintain and fix, and so on all that made for an absolute logistical nightmare when you consider how much wear and tear vehicles go through during wartime, how war disrupts supply lines to cause asymmetries in parts inventories, how even production facilities can stutter in fits and starts due to enemy action, how conflict chews through skilled personal necessitating rapid training schemes, how vehicles designed for one terrain in theory might have to operate on another in practice, etc, etc, etc probably not good enough to be worth the trouble even if their above average performance is genuine Cessna posted:One of the big problems with gaming is that it presents the "on paper" stats of things without giving any sort of practical understanding. it's definitely tough to convey the logistical side of things without your boardgame looking like this 
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2019 22:13
|
|
|
spectralent posted:I just spotted this one, and, personally, if it's a good paint job, or even a mediocre one that's been carried out with enthusiasm, I love that poo poo. I'm never going to be a person who won't play with people because of their models, because hey, hobbies are time-expensive and the world is time-poor, but I'm always going to prefer playing the guy with the Hail Hydra SS over the guy with a bunch of plastic-grey germans on battlefront-brown bases. The thing about the Hail Hydra guys is that I honestly find it nearly as worrying as the wehraboos because those chuds in comics have been using 'Hail Hydra' as their dogwhistle for...five, six years now.
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2019 22:16
|
|
|
Mors Rattus posted:The thing about the Hail Hydra guys is that I honestly find it nearly as worrying as the wehraboos because those chuds in comics have been using 'Hail Hydra' as their dogwhistle for...five, six years now. oh for gently caress's sake I check out of comics for one decade
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2019 22:17
|
|
|
spectralent posted:oh for gently caress's sake oh, I take you it you didn't hear about Nazi Captain America
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2019 22:19
|
|
|
Mors Rattus posted:oh, I take you it you didn't hear about Nazi Captain America I saw the meme. The actual context of that I don't think I ever got, but I assumed the joke was how goofy it was, not that we're earnestly pro-hydra now.
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2019 22:21
|
|
|
spectralent posted:I saw the meme. The actual context of that I don't think I ever got, but I assumed the joke was how goofy it was, not that we're earnestly pro-hydra now. oh good lord no, that entire storyline got adopted by hard right fashy types in comics, they've been hailing hydra unironically e: and the context was for the longest time 'actually we've declared that the cosmic cube retconned reality and it has now reverted to the true reality, in which Steve Rogers was a Nazi who belongs to Hydra, and this is the real Captain America' and this storyline ran on for way too loving long
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2019 22:22
|
|
|
Mors Rattus posted:oh good lord no, that entire storyline got adopted by hard right fashy types in comics, they've been hailing hydra unironically 
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2019 22:26
|
|
|
Mors Rattus posted:oh, I take you it you didn't hear about Nazi Captain America Oh now I get that reference.
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2019 22:29
|
|
|
Mors Rattus posted:oh good lord no, that entire storyline got adopted by hard right fashy types in comics, they've been hailing hydra unironically We knew trouble was coming when Steve Rogers' backstory was retconned so that his father would be abusive for no friggin' reason (just so we could see Steve's mom getting beaten up, I guess) but lord almighty. Imagine being a cheerful Avengers fan who arrived thanks to the movie in 2012 and getting into comics despite Marvel's ongoing attempts to cancel literally anything that wasn't a mainline title...and being gifted the turd of nazi Captain America. gently caress Marvel, gently caress them forever. All I wanted to do was read comics about the characters I came to love in the movies, but noooooo
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2019 22:42
|
|
|
Cessna posted:They had plenty of both. One of the many self-evidently false myths in fascism in both the dressed-up tries-to-be-polite political version and the in-the-streets version is the claim that everybody's in it for higher moral purposes. In reality any actual fascist organization is almost always incredibly corrupt, which makes sense when you figure that they're mostly populated by evil self-aggrandizing shitlords.
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2019 22:49
|
|
|
hard counter posted:it's definitely tough to convey the logistical side of things without your boardgame looking like this It isn't just logistics. One of the big problems is that games, being games, have to be fair. Units are evaluated based on how they work in the game. In order to balance a game - make it fair - some games use scenarios others use points systems, where players buy units. Let's look at points systems. Imagine if you had a game about tanks in WWII. How many T-34/76s do you get for a Tiger tank? - In Flames of War v4 Red Banner T-34s go for about 5.6 points each. They get a bit of a price break if you buy bigger formations, but 5.6 is good for comparison. - In Flames of War v4 Ghost Panzers a Tiger goes for 29 points. That gives us 5.17 T-34s to a Tiger. - According to Wikipedia in 1943 a T-34 cost 135.000 rubles. A Reichmark was about 5.3 rubles, so that T-34 cost 24,471 RM. - According to Wikipedia a Tiger cost 250,800 RM. So a Tiger costs about 10.2 times what a T-34/76 costs. I know these are probably questionable figures, especially the wartime exchange rates. But I think they point out the problem. If you're playing a "fair" game a Tiger is worth about 5 T-34s. But in reality a Tiger cost about 10 times as much to make. So when you're taking Tigers, you've doubled their effectiveness compared to history, because the game evaluates battlefield/in game performance as opposed to manufacturing cost in the interest of fairness. If you want a historically accurate game double the cost of the Tigers. Making the Wehraboos whine is a bonus.
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2019 23:22
|
|
|
The government run by the Nazis is probably one of the most dysfunctional governments in world history. If you're curious Dietrich Orlow's "The Nazi Party 1919 to 1945." It's the dryest thing I've ever read but does a great job explaining how a bunch of dysfunctional assholes attempted to create a government on chudly self interest, with predictable results.
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2019 23:43
|
|
|
Cessna posted:
I'm only partially qualified to talk about this sort of thing but I am really big into Air Soft and MilSim (a somehow nerdier version of airsoft) as a hobby for some time now and while 99% of the time I stick to the Modern or Cold War eras I have once or twice borrowed a spare outfit from one of my buddies and headed along with them to one of the more historical events. It's crazy but the German team always takes about twice as long to get dressed and ready as the Soviets or UK/US players. Nearly a third of my "kills" are surprising a German player fumbling for something in their pockets. And before you ask the whole community is really good at putting down the fash when it is spotted and is pretty good about policing it's own. To the point that speaking German over the voice comms even if it's benign is frowned upon and given the side eye. The general consensus being that Air Soft gets enough bad press and is really working hard to improve the sports image. As far as on topic discussion, I recently moved from South East Michigan to San Antonio Texas and while I was initially worried I am really happy to report that so far my experience has been really positive. I haven't noticed any questionable content/behavior at any of the stores I visited to play kill team.
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2019 23:53
|
|
|
Eifert Posting posted:The government run by the Nazis is probably one of the most dysfunctional governments in world history. If you're curious Dietrich Orlow's "The Nazi Party 1919 to 1945." It's the dryest thing I've ever read but does a great job explaining how a bunch of dysfunctional assholes attempted to create a government on chudly self interest, with predictable results. As for the corruption, that was probably some of the point. I would not be shocked if some of the purpose of inefficient designs was to try to generate revenues for whoever built the Panther and so on.
|
|
#
?
Apr 30, 2019 23:59
|
|
|
Cessna posted:If you want a historically accurate game double the cost of the Tigers. Making the Wehraboos whine is a bonus. in all fairness if we're being so holistic with production figures for a wargame you'd ideally need to account for the early materials surplus (for lack of better word) that the germans managed because they were anticipating the war while many other nations were just reacting to it (to summarize a complicated situation quickly but crudely) a skirmish game will have problems modelling the entirety of the situation, in terms of the resources that'd reasonably be available to a commander at a given time, especially when it needs to pin itself to a specific date during the war to allow for players to take certain makes of tank, for e.g. a game where the long-term inefficiencies of german production design (and attendant factors like the actual/practical cost of a tiger for e.g.) eventually bring themselves to bear once the brutal nature of industrial attrition fully manifests is probably larger in scope, probably something turn-based & risk-like... and tbh would probably make wehraboos whine all the time in the end
|
|
#
?
May 1, 2019 00:00
|
|
|
Eifert Posting posted:The government run by the Nazis is probably one of the most dysfunctional governments in world history. If you're curious Dietrich Orlow's "The Nazi Party 1919 to 1945." It's the dryest thing I've ever read but does a great job explaining how a bunch of dysfunctional assholes attempted to create a government on chudly self interest, with predictable results. There's a good, old BBC series which was made in 1997, The Nazis: A Warning From History, and it talks about how dysfunctional the government is. They interview some Nazis and some Germans who profited from the Nazis and they make it real clear how awful they were without even trying too.
|
|
#
?
May 1, 2019 00:07
|
|
|
Notahippie posted:One of the many self-evidently false myths in fascism in both the dressed-up tries-to-be-polite political version and the in-the-streets version is the claim that everybody's in it for higher moral purposes. In reality any actual fascist organization is almost always incredibly corrupt, which makes sense when you figure that they're mostly populated by evil self-aggrandizing shitlords. Corruption is a consequence of the fascist ideology. "Self-aggrandizing shitlords" is a good summary, yeah. But breaking it down a bit can help you spot the fash, too. When you have their particular kind of rigid hierarchy - where those at the top necessarily deserve to be there because that's the natural and unchanging order of things (ditto those at the bottom ofc), and the contrary is unthinkable, and combine that with the (yes, somewhat dissonant, there's a lot of that) idea of... poo poo I dunno how to say it, but "personal greatness" or "You win or you're Horst Wessel" summarises it, and you get corruption because when you are demonstrably in the greatest part of the greatest party of the greatest nation of the greatest race (gender, religion, and so on), everything you do is necessarily cool and good. E: that's also the reason for the "higher moral purpose" claims, and a big part of the genuine (in the sense that the person saying it believes it's true) "just following orders" defense. E2: Also this poo poo, internalised, makes it really difficult to understand that you hosed up, which makes learning from individual mistakes very difficult, and when everyone's doing it it makes understanding systemic problems impossible because you have to have an extremely careful "what if we weren't already perfect" conversation with every person involved before you can even start. This in a system where everyone believes the boss is the best possible boss because they're the boss and the system that determines who gets to be boss is the best possible system designed by the finest minds in the best party of the best country etc etc. Elector_Nerdlingen fucked around with this message at 00:32 on May 1, 2019 |
|
#
?
May 1, 2019 00:18
|
|
|
The example I always trot out for how inefficient and rife with nepotism and infighting and bullshit is the Fallschirm-Panzer ("Para-Tank") Division Hermann Göring. No, the Nazis did not throw tanks out of airplanes. When that division was formed they didn't even throw guys out of airplanes anymore, unless they were on fire. The Nazi air force had a tank division for no other reason than that Hermann Göring really wanted some tanks because tanks are cool and prestigious. They did about as well in combat as you'd expect from a bunch of airplane ground crew being stuffed into tanks. Meanwhile, the actual army (which is the people who know how to use tanks) is left eating poo poo. I highly recommend Ostfront: Hitler's War of Extermination. It's not exactly a fun read, but it is absolutely chock full of examples of how absolutely terrible the Nazi government was at just being a government. The popular trope of fascism is that while monstrous, it is somehow more efficient than democratic forms of government; Make the trains run on time and all that. One of the main arguments for fascism is that a strong, centralized government free of the restrictions of liberal democracy is much more powerful, to the benefit of the public. This is obviously bullshit, but the average person doesn't know enough history to know that literally every fascist government in history has been a shitshow of clowns trying to wing it running a government while they rob that some government blind with the other. Look at how Trump is running the US government right now - This is exactly how the Nazi government was ran. They were every bit as bumbling, inept, and corrupt, the only difference was that it took decades for the details to emerge while Trump does it live on Twitter.
|
|
#
?
May 1, 2019 00:24
|
|
|
Bob Wins posted:
San Antonio is diverse enough to not have a huge white power scene, or at least that was true when I lived in the region about 10 years ago. There's a small hammerskin presence in Austin, though, and Dallas has (or had) a fairly dangerously large scene.
|
|
#
?
May 1, 2019 00:25
|
|
|
People tend to forget, or not learn at all I guess, that the Nazis went all-in on crony capitalism. The gonzo wunderweapons and even more useless cruft than usual throughout everything makes perfect sense after that, really. The US MIC is definitely headed there, though. Like... the Zumwalt.
|
|
#
?
May 1, 2019 00:32
|
|
|
Geisladisk posted:Hermann Göring really wanted some tanks because tanks are cool Stopped clock etc.
|
|
#
?
May 1, 2019 00:41
|
|
|
Planes are cooler than tanks. This is known.
|
|
#
?
May 1, 2019 00:42
|
|
|
Beerdeer posted:And now the discussion is about fascist gear in the forum about Trad Gaming Shut up, this poo poo is cool to read about
|
|
#
?
May 1, 2019 00:46
|
|
|
My grandfather has a gewehr 43 that was literally picked up off the end of an assembly line in an ocupied west Berlin suburb. It's shocking how bad the production quality is. It looks like a high-schoolers Woodshop project. A remedial high schooler.
|
|
#
?
May 1, 2019 00:55
|
|
|
hard counter posted:in all fairness if we're being so holistic with production figures for a wargame you'd ideally need to account for the early materials surplus (for lack of better word) that the germans managed because they were anticipating the war while many other nations were just reacting to it (to summarize a complicated situation quickly but crudely) The Nazis didn't anticipate a drat thing. They had the war economy of an addict, lurching from from looting one country to the next. Where did you get the idea that they had a materials surplus? hard counter posted:a skirmish game will have problems modelling the entirety of the situation, in terms of the resources that'd reasonably be available to a commander at a given time, especially when it needs to pin itself to a specific date during the war to allow for players to take certain makes of tank, for e.g. Sure, some games do this. ASL, for example, has the option of making tanks have "rarity costs" tied to the month and year of a scenario. If you want that Elefant in 1945, okay, but the points value has a coefficient to make it cost more due to its rarity. You'd probably be better served with cheap/low rarity Stg-IIIs. That said, this inherently affects game balance. And in fairness such considerations are beyond the scope of the decisions made by a company commander anyway. My only point in bringing this up isn't to try to model everything, instead, it is to point out how wargames often paint an unrealistic and inaccurate picture of things due to the fact that they're games.
|
|
#
?
May 1, 2019 01:01
|
|
|
Even Videya games have that issue, in order for "fair and balanced" multiplayer you can't have German guns jamming all the time. I did like how in one of the older Silent Hunter games (games where you played as a submarine and in some cases U-Boat commander) when you played as a U-Boat commander the game got difficult to the point of near impossibility near the end. Allied patrols became really good at finding you and relentless at hunting you down, your boat broke down all the time and most of the time your slave labor built torpedoes were defective.
|
|
#
?
May 1, 2019 01:10
|
|
|
Hydra Cap will be a really good Red Skull, at some point at least.
|
|
#
?
May 1, 2019 01:13
|
|
|
Cessna posted:The Nazis didn't anticipate a drat thing. They had the war economy of an addict, lurching from from looting one country to the next.
|
|
#
?
May 1, 2019 01:19
|
|
|
Halloween Jack posted:Did they have anything that was genuinely good besides the MG42? The StuG III was notable because they were easily mass produced and could kill anything that the allies fielded, and most reported "Tigers" were probably these instead. The Stuka wasnt particularly amazing (it did its job) but as a psychological weapon it was loving incredible and the trumpet is still pretty iconic 70 years later
|
|
#
?
May 1, 2019 01:24
|
|
|
I need a solid YouTube series on why the Nazis were morons and made bad stuff, this is very entertaining
|
|
#
?
May 1, 2019 01:25
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 9, 2024 20:31 |
|
|
Also the T-34 is highly overrated and I will vouch for my good bro the Sherman any day of the week
|
|
#
?
May 1, 2019 01:26
|
|