Russkies in Oklahoma!

[klanx171]

"Catch Russian gifts,"

classic russian humor, funny stuff.

I have played a bit of MBT against the ruskies (the computer) recently and have found a possible way to drain off the russian AA (read missile) forces without wasting planes (sorta).

using UAVs to scan the bare edge (your side not theirs) of the map has proven to draw out as much AA as the other side can lob up, all at about 5-9% hit chance. The UAV also does not do its 3 loops but just one as it exits off as it gos round the first time. I found this to work well and if you take a spare UAV it can still work even if you loose one.

Unfortunately this doesnt work if you send the UAVs in any closer, then the numbers go up and you go down, but in test battles I drew off all the russian AA and then had my planes come in and finish the job, its not fool proof but it works, the small size UAVs are hard to hit and while expensive do open up things.

Im interested also to see how this goes as Id like to make up some russia vs georgia battles for future games.

[seabolt]

using UAVs to scan the bare edge (your side not theirs) of the map has proven to draw out as much AA as the other side can lob up, all at about 5-9% hit chance. The UAV also does not do its 3 loops but just one as it exits off as it gos round the first time. I found this to work well and if you take a spare UAV it can still work even if you loose one.

I've thought about doing that, but suspect it would only work with the expensive drones, and it would be an expensive mistake if it failed. Thanks for pointing out that it's been working for you.

Im interested also to see how this goes as Id like to make up some russia vs georgia battles for future games.

Problem is, we have no Georgia. Splintex and I are doing current events in our next match, too. I said, eh, use Ukraine as a surrogate. Some of you will start laughing at my geopolitical stupidity at this point. It's a setup designed for a B- Soviet castoff TO/E, but he'll field an A- Red Army splinter. Big, big difference in quality. It's going to be a real challenge. Every little dirty drone-finessing trick will help.

-- 30 --

[junk2drive]

As posted elsewhere, (maybe here, I'm old) Mobhack posted an OOB at Shrapnel for Georgia. It uses the Red country and you use your OOB swapper to install.

[klanx171]

Thats exactly what i did when i wanted to see how things might fare in and SPMBT world, took the Ukraine, but from what i hear the Georgian have US equipment as well.

As having studied modern war for my masters and all the little technological nik knacks that make up its complex mechanism its interesting to see that while MBT is not as accurate as it could be it recreates the same dynamic in its own way, you have to choose wisely but you need to cover all your bases and as you seem to have found out, if your Opp skimps on an area of gear it can be exploited.

For me the simplified formulas is this

ATGM trump armor
infantry trumps armor at close range
armor trumps other armor
Air power kicks ass or goes down in flames
Arty suppresses

This means that I end up nosing my armor and infantry forward in little leapfrogs, trying to draw out the things which I can trump while not getting my trumpable units trumped.

Or if digging in I use the old German rule of get forward and make them attack you, ie small defense/large offense idea which works well against the com, live Opps I dont know which is why I want to take up some MBT battles, the old urge is coming back.

of course the computer is not so subtle and if countered well just keeps on pushing till its doom, but there are some battles in MBT where its a much smaller Allied forces vers a horde of Russians which if handled by a live player would probably run amok over the smaller force deployed there if ot for the wealth of RPGs and ATGMs which the US and its allies seem to have, god forbid what a US assault on a Russian position would look like.

The drone thing works pretty wel, I tested it to see which did and didnt and it can be pulled off, the only problem is iff your Opp has lots of ammo resupply and then you have to count the shots and bag them in the intervals. tricky stuff.

[seabolt]

Mobhack posted an OOB at Shrapnel for Georgia.

Thanks for the tip, not that I expect Splintex to give up Ukraine. ;) Especially since he's already allowed some U.S. air and airmobile/Rangers as long as they begin the game loaded in a U.S. helicopter. I was pretty inventive in designing my own grave.

Thats exactly what i did when i wanted to see how things might fare in and SPMBT world, took the Ukraine, but from what i hear the Georgian have US equipment as well.

Yea? News to me. What little I've seen suggests very small inventories of dated Soviet fare.

ATGM trump armor
infantry trumps armor at close range
armor trumps other armor
Air power kicks ass or goes down in flames
Arty suppresses

Looks about right, and as usual raises the SPMBT question, "Why again did I buy the weapon system that the game's named after?" I do hope that the ATGM gets nerfed (weakened) in the next build. At a minimum, until recent years, the target should get a single opfire at the ATGM team *before* the missile hits, with any supression counting triple or quadruple on the missile's accuracy. But that's probably more programming than can be done.

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[klanx171]

I dont think the Georgians bought any big ticket items just yet, but reports of 200 milion dollars in aid last year, a mix of Israeli and US training and equipment must have shown some changes, even if at only the lower levels, like in infantry weapons and such.

I will go out on my useual limb and state that tanks are specialized beasts (nearly obsolete) and always have been, that fact that SPMBT has lots of other equipment and weapons shows its not just a game about tanks, the fact that man portable weapons can now stop and destroy tanks makes playing the game against tanks a case of getting as much ATGM stuff as possible while covering the bases for others as well.

If a chopper can carry as much firepower as a tanks and is much more maneuverable then why use tanks? ok choppers go down easy but mots games of MBT I play I find that keeping my tanks outta sight until I know its safe is a priority as one man with a missile can smoke it, or things like APCs/BMPs with mounted ATGMs can make it hard and then there is all that new missile mounted stuff in later years.

Most of the WWIII scenarios in the game see hordes of tanks and BMPs rolling across the terrain and if you can get your forces into the right places, choke points and such it becomes a slaughter, of course if the russians dismounted the infantry before rushing in it might be different but the game useally will not play like that.

In an idea for the next tournament is a future war scenario, on special maps, to try and really thrash the ideas out, kinda like gladiators but with various combination's of forces.

[seabolt]

I will go out on my useual limb and state that tanks are specialized beasts (nearly obsolete)

I suspect that you're right, but why stop there? Pilots are dead obsolete; drones would outperform manned planes. If missiles sweep armor from the modern battlefield, then helicopters have no chance, either. And the AFV is just a thin-skinned tank with passenger space.

That leaves the poor infantryman and all of that gear to hump, at least until we develop a robot with the dexterity and decision-making to replace him. And soon after that happens a smaller, cheaper robot will overwhelm the original with dispersed numbers, then again and again, until we're down to nanogladiators sweeping across the front like a plague of buckyball-skinned locusts ...

I think I'll go sharpen the edge on my flint axe.

-- 30 --

[klanx171]

if the studies I worked on have any bearing its only a matter of time before intelligent processing is mixed with mobile and adaptive machinery and then you have terminator like machines, they already have robots working on the ground in Iraq and then humans are obsolete, just send in the machines, sounds like sci fi but thats where most of the research is heading in the high end of the field. That said the whole future warfare thing is wildly speculative but interesting but the idea of humans being redundant in war is an interesting idea.

When you look at SPMBT, men in most cases crew the wepons, or machines and just do the thinking and even then that is being removed with automatic systems and such, so when the computer brain catches up with the technology, imagine a tank, with no crew, roaming around and doing the same as now, cool but it means we will have nothing to play as the computer will just play itself.

Im all for the human spirit but lets face it the biggest problem in war today is protecting the fragile bags of flesh from damage and making us able to survive combat in the face of the awesome firepower arrayed, remove the bags of flesh and you simplify things, look at UAVs, and that was science fiction kinda stuff once, humans may just be redundant in warfare one day, except for the political deciscions, and even then if you watch the terminator movies....

[seabolt]

if the studies I worked on have any bearing its only a matter of time before intelligent processing is mixed with mobile and adaptive machinery and then you have terminator like machines, they already have robots working on the ground in Iraq and then humans are obsolete, just send in the machines,

Having added my share of gasoline to this conceptual bonfire, I'll now contribute an equal portion of water.

The researchers in the field constantly gloss over this distinction, but the difference between a drone with a human operator on the far end of a telelink and a true autonomous machine is absolutely vast. Those robots on the ground and UAVs in the air in Iraq have "eyes" but they can't "see." Their video feed is just an abstract array of pixels. Sophisticated programming can provide some rudimentary element analysis for their video feed, maybe on par with the ability of a housefly, but it will be ages before a machine can negotiate its environment with the sensory confidence of a drunken fratboy, much less that of a honed and wary warrior.

Early efforts in autonomous warfare tech also will struggle mightily with the context gap, which is the fact that you can't program decision-making into a device as quickly as a human can subvert your work. If you really want to beat Big Blue, you kick over the chessboard and break out a deck of cards and the poker chips. When Big Blue relearns how to be the ultimate poker bot you cash in and set up the backgammon board. *Or* you let Big Blue eat your queen in its opening moves to distract it as you pull its power cord.

By the time that you have a machine with our level of sensory analysis and abstract conceptualization, you no longer have a machine: You have a stainless steel human. The transhumanists make the argument that eventually we'll design our own evolution in this fashion. They might be right. The world certainly won't be an arena full of chrome sociopaths vs hapless meat monkeys, whatever the case.

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[Deadeye]

if the studies I worked on have any bearing its only a matter of time before intelligent processing is mixed with mobile and adaptive machinery and then you have terminator like machines, they already have robots working on the ground in Iraq and then humans are obsolete, just send in the machines,

Having added my share of gasoline to this conceptual bonfire, I'll now contribute an equal portion of water.

The researchers in the field constantly gloss over this distinction, but the difference between a drone with a human operator on the far end of a telelink and a true autonomous machine is absolutely vast. Those robots on the ground and UAVs in the air in Iraq have "eyes" but they can't "see." Their video feed is just an abstract array of pixels. Sophisticated programming can provide some rudimentary element analysis for their video feed, maybe on par with the ability of a housefly, but it will be ages before a machine can negotiate its environment with the sensory confidence of a drunken fratboy, much less that of a honed and wary warrior.

Interesting discussions - and at the risk of taking the thread even farther OT than it is, I'll submit two video links for your enjoyment/distress - whichever.

The first video shows a quadruped robot navigating both sheer ice and a jumble of cinder blocks. The second video shows how the vision system of Stanley works. (Stanley was the winner of the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge autonomous ground vehicle race).



Deadeye