fritz1776.bsky.social
99 posts
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13 following
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That was composed by completely different people, both sides of the civil war constantly copied eachother's songs and it had nothing to do with "capitalism", just the melodies being strong and copyright being unenforceable.
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Even if Lee wins a defensive campaign in the east Grant is going to win in the west and compromise the CSA’s integrity. Unless Lee can force the Feds to recognize the CSA as independent they loose eventually.
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How does that mesh with his success though? Is it just “Lee sucked but his opponents were even worse pre-Gettysburg?” I’d be willing to accept it but it feels unsatisfying.
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I think there’s value in having that level of fidelity, and being able to meddle down to extremely low levels has value, but the game should be designed around that stuff being handled automatically, since in-universe you’d only meddle in something like bomb loadouts under extreme circumstances.
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Of course the solution is to either reduce the fidelity of the game, obviously unacceptable, or provide AI capable of microing itself, and companies always seem to be a mix of unwilling and unable to do the latter.
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CoH and Eugen games have the problem of requiring pretty extreme micromanagement to achieve anything and it quickly becomes obvious why no competent military has ever tried that, and should battle management software get to the point it’s technically possible why no human can hope to make it work.
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I recently played a modern warfare kriegspiel game with battalion level players but platoons simulated, and it was a lot of work for the umpires but think it illustrates how a videogame needs to handle modern warfare. The player can’t micro all their platoons but they *can* manage their companies.
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When would you say they embraced APM? I’m not disagreeing that WARNO has way too much micro for me to enjoy, but I don’t get the sense that was less true of European Escalation.
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Endor wasn’t really Midway IMO since the capital ships were in contact for most of the battle. I agree the influence is WW2 naval warfare but the emphasis on battlecarriers prevents any analogue to a historical engagement. Maybe a Britain vs Japan night battle counterfactual?
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The other one is being reassembled by Ian McCollum.
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Except most of those people never go on to internalize that this depiction gets far more wrong than it does right. And it’s not like an accurate depiction would garner less interest, so we gain nothing from the inaccuracy.
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I disagree about budgets though, personnel costs don’t make up enough of the budget for the AVF to claim responsibility for the relatively small peace dividend the U.S. experienced.
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Also, this read was depressing as hell. I absolutely see the civil-military relationship breaking down and for better or worse reinstating conscription is absolutely not happening, so I’m at a loss for how it can be solved.
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To which the obvious answer is “He isn’t, and if the Vong do become relevant to his plan it’s as a way to keep the Moffs focused on an external threat”.
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But it being the motive for anything else slams head first into the obvious timeline issues of: “Why is Palpatine orchestrating this decades long plan to take over the galaxy if it’s all to combat a threat he’ll only learn of years later?”
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I’m pretty sure he only found out about them after he’d set up most of the Clone Wars and was ready to pull the trigger. I could see the superweapons and Thrawn being motivated by the Vong threat (though IMO the former is a post hoc justification sold to the Moffs)…
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No, it’s 40’s. Ukraine and Russia have a very unusual population pyramid due to the 90’s and the ensuing birth rate collapse. The result is that the demographic cohort which dominates western militaries barely exists in those countries, so the army is mostly composed of older men born in the 80’s.
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Do you have a better term you’d recommend for the volunteerization of the Roman army? “Marian transition” appeals to me, showing that this is a change Marius kicked off despite not being a proper “reform”, but you’d know better than I would what makes sense.
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Yeah the paper I linked talks about Hwasong-15 and 18, and assumes a 260 and 145 second boost phase respectively. We can assume Chinese or Russian missiles can go even lower than that, especially if designed around the existence of such interceptors.
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Agreed, but if you are seeking perfect defense and not merely mitigation you are going in with the assumption that your interceptors get all the missiles. MIRVs and decoys thus change nothing unless you have discourse or terminal fallbacks which assume X% of leakers.
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Launch costs are way down since then, and projected to go lower, so it might actually be (becoming) feasible, but yes the price point is still immense. You’re looking at hundreds of billions just to check the DPRK threat. Russia or China are off the table entirely even with all of NATO buying in.
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The paper in question, if you’re intrested. I actually understated the ratio, 100% coverage for even that minimally capable attack would take a 1.6k interceptor constellation. 2.2k with 30 seconds of decision time. And it only gets worse as our missiles become more numerous and capable.
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Ok I went back to check and this is insanely optimistic. Even a best case scenario where we have no launch delay (there’d be one) and the attack is a whopping 4 liquid fuels Korean rockets (so the boost phase is much longer than it could be) you need hundreds for full coverage.
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The mention of orbital positioning seems to indicate boost-phase interception, so that entirely bypasses the MIRV/decoy problem since those can only deploy during mid course at the latest. That said 10-1 is exceedingly generous if you want 100% coverage.
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that eliminates the single greatest threat.
Also I should mention that MD is rather notorious for its speed traps, which are really a way to extract revenue and have no relation to public safety.
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IMO the German model where hard limits only exist for low-speed areas, large trucks, and the rightmost road while on the autobahn its lane priority that is aggressively enforced is better. The biggest risk of crash is someone weaving between vehicles, so if they just floor it on the right…
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Maybe there are tools experts can use to make an educated guess on the pre-Homeric tradition though. I’ve seen anthropologists assert a confidence in the reliability of oral traditions I struggle to comprehend, but I assume they’re using tools I’m unfamiliar with and they might apply here.
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Isn’t the answer solidly “Homer didn’t think so given his use of philia over eros, but we can’t know about the oral tradition he was adapting”? I can’t read Greek so I can’t argue authoritatively, but the Greek terminology around love would seem to make any specific text unambiguous in its position.
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Different subfactions of the Left. I suspect the anti-trans ones described here are some flavor of Marxist-Leninist while the ones you’re referring to are intersectionalists.
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DLC models don’t seem to be changing at all, so this is just an additional $10-20 upfront fee on addition to every other monetization trick which has been implemented over the last decade or two.
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Why are we assuming raising prices will solve most of this? Even if it does increase revenues by minimally impacting sales (I’m buying fewer AAA games than before precisely because of these price increases, so questionable) why am I to assume microtransactions and live-service will stop?
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Before you ask, and it’s ironic given my avatar is a HoI4 dev as a German general, don’t play much historical Germany, I usually go for a democracy or play a mod, since going as the Nazis feels gross.
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It’s because Germany is basically the main character of the game. In a historical game Germany and Japan (and Italy as a distant third) are the ones acting while everyone else reacts, and Germany is the European land power so they’re automatically more appealing than the pacific power.
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I’m glad you’ve said this because I think my inability to reframe the discussion from “overpowered” to “overcentered” has been a shortcoming despite having a basically identical conclusion to you here.
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Would that circumvent Trump v US? I suppose that since the statement was made out of office it shouldn’t be subject to absolute or presumptive immunity. Honestly if the next president doesn’t at least attempt this I’m gonna be pissed.
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I wonder if Burgundy -> Dutch Republic will even be possible without unrestricted culture changing. IIRC the Burgundian inheritance is getting cut so if you can reproduce the 1337-1444 historical success (fat chance the AI pulls this off without extreme railroading), you’ve basically won.
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Ah. I thought this was about EUV. Yeah imperator is really iffy on what the heck the player is. I did like the proposal that in monarchies you play the ruler, but in republics you play the electorate.
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Though just intuitively (as a non-expert) I’d say that a French state does exist in 1337, it just isn’t synonymous with the entire kingdom of France and only extends to the royal domain, which is the ingame starting setup. Not sure if you’d agree though and you would know better than me.
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The devs were pretty explicit that you’re the state during the TT on characters, so I’m curious what changes you’d suggest to make that more clear mechanically. Also how this works in the early game where as I understand you would argue a French or English state doesn’t exist.
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So I’m not surprised a westerner was elected pope, an African pope would care about very different issues. Choosing a US-American specifically is a big surprise, though Leo is an outlier among U.S. Catholics and is technically more a Peruvian within the context of the church.
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The thing is that “the west” is where the church gets most of its revenues, and the per-capita difference is absolutely massive. A cultural Catholic in Europe will give more in donations each week than some entire African villages do in a year, and that isn’t changing any time soon.
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100% someone is going to make a total conversion which is the de facto Imperator II.
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IIRC the door-gun we see is pretty effective against them, and that can’t be in the same league as an X-Wing’s cannons, so that implies to me that these are far more lightly armored than the AT-ATs deployed on Hoth.
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House of the Dragon sucks? I’ll admit I don’t watch it, but I heard it was pretty good and *far* better than Rings of Power.
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Speaking of WRPGs, did you finish KCD2 or was it dropped early in the Kuttenberg section? I was curious of your thoughts on the Jewish subplot and Seige of Suchdol but you stopped commenting on the game before either. Just curious since I found your other thoughts on the game interesting.
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The worst part about that fight is that the Jumbo should’ve been immune from the front, at least at such long ranges, while Fury herself could’ve taken out the Tiger so long as she could make the shot, yet for some reason she has to flank at knife fight range like she’s using a 75mm and not a 76mm.
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That and the censorship. The fact the controversy was blocked from even being discussed on the vast majority of websites which might normally discuss this sort of thing created a massive Streisand Effect.
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My read was that the gamers are dead articles specifically are what gave it such legs. Without those it’s limited to tabloid level gossip, but throw those on and you have what was seen to be a coordinated attack on the audience of what’s supposed to be a consumer advocacy group.
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Is there any hope that this can be reversed in 2029, or is this likely to be a permanent fatality of the Trump admin?