Tankbuster posted:

tbh mrs flake is right. The two of them get to live upper middle class pmc life and FF gets to read goofy french articles about how the SS would have won at dien bien phu

Frosted Flake posted:

I hate to say that she's right, because I'm well within the letter of the law, but these days you have to Slava heroyam or Slava home.

Regarde Aduck posted:

cannot believe how close dragon fly is to bat in the poll

absolute stupid fucks

Frosted Flake posted:

Eventually, that would change, but it took a long time for either side to equip and organize enough artillery units to decisively shape the battle, as the Federal artillery later would at Picketts charge, for example.

Lostconfused posted:

There's no Reason for China to get involved unless NATO joins in directly.

There's still plenty of room for Russia to escalate, even if there's some volunteer battalions starting to appear from eastern parts of EU.

The Russians will be complaining about how they're all alone and nobody loves them, but it shouldn't be enough to stop them.

gradenko_2000 posted:

Lee already had his rear end handed to him with massed artillery at Malvern Hill but somehow thought Pickett's Charge would work under worse circumstances

Megamissen posted:

dragon fly evolves into a cool dragon, bat just gets a bigger mouth

Regarde Aduck posted:

this is troubling

what else has been kept from me

Cpt_Obvious posted:

IMO China would be wise to stay as far away from this conflict as possible and then swoop in to play peacemaker and set itself up as mediator between Russia and Europe. That way, if the US starts ratcheting up pressure on Taiwan they can glower scarily at Europe and maybe they'll stay home.

Dixon Chisholm posted:

this mfer doesnt play pokemon

gradenko_2000 posted:

HOI2 is still a better game than 3 or 4

dk2m posted:

also very plausible. striking moscow is basically extremely stupid and reckless, there’s too much uncertainty and could backfire spectacularly; the fact that the US is often in the dark on what Ukraine has planned is kind of terrifying for the world at large

Dixon Chisholm posted:

this mfer doesnt play pokemon

dk2m posted:

I think the calculus for Chinese involvement will be as a counterweight to American/QUAD pressures in Taiwan and the South China Sea. The longer this conflict goes on, the more China can leverage this war as a pressure point. a strike in moscow may or may not cause them to react, but it could be enough of a political cover to do so if they choose to

rip the euros, they are caught in the middle and there’s no real winning move for them since they can’t determine us or Chinese policy, both of which ultimately affect them the most

genericnick posted:

Still not clear to me what that would do or who would be pressured. Discounting Ukraine it'd be the euros and what would pressuring them do?

Regarde Aduck posted:

they literally don't teach any of this at bat school

Lostconfused posted:

This is what happens when you hitch your wagon to a bunch of nazis that want to achieve national purity through a crucible of fire and death.

Everyone knew this was going to happen, so just gonna have to suck it up and deal with the consequences.

ArmZ posted:

confirmed: fox news are banderites

https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1650539164440444930?s=20

Frosted Flake posted:

WRT artillery since the Napoleonic Wars, in the first year of the ACW neither side had enough guns or artillery officers for it to be concentrated and directed effectively on the battlefield. In the Eastern Theatre, it didn't make much of a mark at Bull Run and was largely absent in the battles in West Virginia. That was even more true in the Western Theatre where there were a handful of artillery batteries of US Army regulars, mostly old smoothbore guns, and they weren't used to much effect.

I have no idea how CWSAC works, but




for example there were only 4 (understrength, equipped with light smoothbore guns) batteries of Union Artillery at Rich Mountain, 2 batteries and a company (?) at Wilson's Creek, 2 batteries and one detached troop of 2 guns at Carnifex Ferry, 4 batteries at Ball's Bluff, of which 2 were militia, no artillery at Chustenahlah.

Eventually, that would change, but it took a long time for either side to equip and organize enough artillery units to decisively shape the battle, as the Federal artillery later would at Picketts charge, for example.

e: I've read, though I will leave it to one of you Yanks to explain it, that the politics of antebellum West Point had a lot to do with this. I think the other arms had better peacetime career outcomes in the years leading up to the Civil War, so there were already comparatively few artillery officers. Then, whatever % of the peacetime officer corps and West Point cadets immediately defected to the CSA.

Finally, while the south inherited basically no industry that could make modern guns, in the 1850s large amounts of artillery pieces were diverted to southern arsenals by southern officers in what may or may not have been a conspiracy. As a result, the Union started with less guns than it needed but was able to make more, and the south started with more than it needed but could not. The CSA was able to purchase British artillery pieces, until they destroyed the cotton harvest to blackmail Britain and France into entering the war (???) and subsequently had a hard time buying anything.

genericnick posted:

Still not clear to me what that would do or who would be pressured. Discounting Ukraine it'd be the euros and what would pressuring them do?

ArmZ posted:

confirmed: fox news are banderites

PoontifexMacksimus posted:

The relative lack of decisiveness I base so far on the Hess infantry book you recommended (haven't gotten to the volume on artillery yet, assume that will introduce a bunch more nuance).

His quick summary in that book on the artillery's overall effectiveness was that it was better on defence than offence because most pieces were too heavy to make effective mobile weapons, but despite their theoretical weight of shot the design of fuses and shells was still too primitive to make them decisive at long range.

Popy posted:

i wonder if the Gundam: One Year War mod for hoi4 ever got more updates

PoontifexMacksimus posted:

Godlessdonut posted:

Base HoI2, Darkest Hour, or Arsenal of Democracy?

Lostconfused posted:

Wonder what the "Tucker Carlson in Russian" guy will do now.

tazjin posted:

TC is probably just gonna make a podcast

Dixon Chisholm posted:

i read darkest hour and darkest dungeon, and now im gonna mod dd to be about pure aryan ukrainians freeing the land from orks, vatniks, nonwhites...

dk2m posted:

Europe is not at all self sufficient. they depend on the US and china equally. China knows this and can pressure Europe via Russia, as they’re doing already by economically integrating with Russia and supplying Russia with materials like chips they lost access to from the west.

The more overt this support becomes, the more China forces Europes hand to confront the policies set by the US; Macon even mentioned that europe should not “blindly” follow us policy. China, and by extension their vision of the SCO and BRICS, is becoming a parallel economy altogether, with bilateral currency swaps, it’s own indepdent bank (the New Development Bank) and huge infrastructure investments.

Europe has no real sovereignty and blew up their industrial prowess by making the cost structure of their economy quite difficult - paying western living standard wages and still having extremely high raw material inputs from expensive energy is the worst of all worlds. they cannot walk away from the increasingly Chinese led order, and so they are stuck between the US insistence on its rivalry and Chinese economic leverage over Europe

Dixon Chisholm posted:

i read darkest hour and darkest dungeon, and now im gonna mod dd to be about pure aryan ukrainians freeing the land from orks, vatniks, nonwhites...