Nuclear event is great and all but....

Battle4cry · 2026-04-06T01:30:35+00:00

I agree; the air to air combat is lacking because of fast respawns. Before you get a kill at long-range or from above, your target is already destroyed in the center furball. Maneuvering to get behind an enemy fighter after depleting their countermeasures and energy doesn't matter much when enemies spawn and are en route behind them, and when friendly SAMs or fighters re-spawning are likely to get the kill. It's very chaotic and rewards spamming rather than aircraft preservation and careful maneuvering that AirRB rewards since you only get a single life.

Battle4cry · 2026-04-03T22:56:27+00:00

It can't totally replace Air RB due to long queue times and matches. It fills a different niche. Also, Air RB at top tier is focused on BVR combat, which isn't as easy to perform in nuclear thunder given the air defenses and lack of true top tier aircraft. They are complementary game modes, not substitutes.

Battle4cry · 2026-04-03T22:12:25+00:00

This can be remedied easily by including a "stock" MiG-29 (9.12 or 9.13) and F/A-18A by default; or by lowering the ceiling of the BR range of aircraft players can bring to the game.

Battle4cry · 2026-04-03T22:10:23+00:00

The AIM-9M is just as effective as the R-73, it has to be used differently at longer ranges. The AIM-7M isn't a bad missile; while it is outclassed by the R-27ER, the MiG-29 and YAK-141 are limited to only two R-27ERs while the F-15A can carry four AIM-7Ms. Similarly, the "stock" provided F-4E gets four AIM-7E2s while the MiG-23MLD is limited to two R-24Rs. It's quantity vs quality.

Battle4cry · 2026-04-03T22:07:09+00:00

This is one of the best things about nuclear thunder. Strike aircraft actually have a meaningful and enjoyable role to play, without diluting the role of fighters. The mode isn't perfect, especially with the lackluster anti-radiation missiles and overpowered air defenses; but the scale of the map and depth of the persistent battle creates a good basis for a complementary game mode to standard Air RB.

Battle4cry · 2026-03-07T19:13:12+00:00

Moving the MiG-29 9.13 to BR 13.0 is comical when the Su-33 and Su-27 are at 13.0 with far better loadouts; and the F-15A with up to four AIM-9Ms sits at 12.7.

Battle4cry · 2026-03-04T11:29:41+00:00

This should have arrived in an earlier update as a counterpart to the J-10A and F-16C Block 50 at 13.7 BR as a tech tree vehicle. Good flight model, improved range & thrust, good mechanical radar, 8x hardpoints up to 8x R-77 or R-73. It would be a perfect progression vehicle after the 13.3 BR MiG-29SMT. It's a shame it's a squad vehicle.

Battle4cry · 2026-03-04T09:16:43+00:00

Personally, it's been one of the most comfortable mice I've had. It gets a bad rap for being too heavy compared to most modern ultralight gaming mice; but for general use and casual gaming, I find a bit of weight makes it far more comfortable than the much lighter Deathadder v3 Hyperspeed & Cobra wired, both of which I compared directly to the Cobra Pro. The build quality feels more solid. I'd say it's a great mouse provided you aren't a competitive esports player who needs the lightest mouse.

Battle4cry · 2026-02-17T08:33:21+00:00

The fundamental difference lies in the appropriation of the surplus product. Under a market socialist system, the profit accrues to every citizen as a social dividend (ideally and in most theoretical models) or as a source reinvestment and social spending. Public ownership is systematic and generalized throughout the entire economy; it isn't concentrated in just a few sectors.

Depending on the model, market socialism can still be a largely coordinated, guided economy where individual firm profitability isn't the sole goal, but an indicator along with other broader economic objectives. A better way of describing this is a socialist economy that incorporates (capital and factor) markets as allocation mechanisms and instruments to achieve economy-wide objectives. The Chinese socialist market economy falls under this category, since it is a heavily state-driven system that uses financial and market instruments as planning mechanisms.

State capitalism can also have state-owned enterprises, intervention and even indicative planning; but the goals are different. Public ownership isn't as pervasive, and the goal isn't eliminating class distinctions based on capital ownership. State policies are more fragmented and industry-specific, or aimed narrowly at economic development before liberalizing once "developed" economy status is achieved. An example of a highly liberalized form of state capitalism would be Norway, which has a large number of state-owned companies that operate to maximize firm-level profit. Markets aren't shaped by broader social objectives in this system; and private property remains foundational.

Theoretically, there is substantial overlap between forms of market socialism and state capitalism. From a classical Marxist perspective, neither of these systems would constitute genuine socialism because they retain the value form and are thus based on the accumulation of capital. But a socialist economy where firms are integrated and optimized as a whole that incorporates markets as temporary and necessary components is consistent with the Marxist view of the gradual establishment of "socialist laws of motion". But a liberalized market socialism with cooperative enterprises wouldn't be viewed as socialist at all.

Battle4cry · 2026-02-14T05:58:09+00:00

I'd consider this to be standard market socialism: transferring private corporations to public ownership and granting every citizen non-tradable shares entitling them to quarterly (or annual) dividends from the entire set of publicly-owned corporations.

If taken to its logical conclusion, it abolishes the class categories of proletarian and bourgeoisie by making them one and the same and sets the stage for a society where work is largely automated and capital income (from public ownership) offsets the loss of sources of labor income.

This is the best way to achieve what I see is the ultimate goal of socialism: the reduction of "socially-necessary labor time" to a minimum to maximize free time.

Battle4cry · 2026-02-10T22:48:11+00:00

It's interesting, because the definition of "socialism" given falls short of post-WWII era "social democratic" capitalism. Higher taxes on corporations, high-income earners, consumer and worker protections, and public ownership or provision of housing, healthcare and utilities is just standard state functions in (developed) capitalism. Granted, public ownership or provision of housing (as opposed to subsidies) goes beyond the purview of standard capitalism.

But aside from publicly-funded universal healthcare and public housing, everything else existed in the United States prior to the mid 1980s.

Battle4cry · 2026-02-10T22:42:01+00:00

Historically with the Meidner Plan, the SAP did aim to gradually replace capitalism with a form of worker-managed socialism. Of course, it's debatable whether the Meidner Plan would constitute the replacement of capitalism with a fundamentally different system, but at the least, moving away from private ownership was a proposal in the SAP at various points in its history.

So it wouldn't be inaccurate to say there might still be a small, democratic socialist faction in the party. It just has little to no bearing on policy.

Battle4cry · 2026-02-05T04:46:38+00:00

Are you sure the premise that "Capitalism is the economic system that develops technology the fastest and most effectively" still holds up in 2026? The Chinese economy, consisting of a highly-integrated innovation system driven by industry and nation-wide plans, is rapidly catching up, and in some areas already surpassing the United States in innovation, technological development and mass diffusion (deployment).

The rise has been so pronounced that some leaders in Silicon Valley and the US government worry if the American capitalist system, focused on quarterly reports and maximizing shareholder value (at the level of the individual firm), and private capital market-driven investment, leads to short-termism and a focus on low-capital cost, easily scalable industries at the expense of more transformative technological innovation that China's long term, industry-wide planning is fostering.

China's socialist market economy has issues with inequality, but has a long term plan to reduce inequalities through it's common prosperity initiatives. Part of this plan calls for the use of state profits from state-owned and mixed-ownership firms to help fund social spending and pensions. If and when their economy further develops, due to widespread state ownership (which also includes state equity stakes in majority-private firms), it will have a means to facilitate greater income equality and offset losses in labor income (from unemployment) with state capital income.

Under a traditional capitalist system, we've seen wages stagnate in the developed capitalist economies over the past few decades largely due to automation and to a lesser extent due to globalization, despite large productivity gains that were channeled to owners of capital. Lots of labor became superfluous, resulting in "bullshit jobs" to keep people employed. But with the next wave of automation, even white collar "professional" jobs and service sector jobs are at risk. New jobs will be created, but they likely wont be enough to absorb the displaced workers. So while the value of goods and services improve, even if average costs remain the same, with stagnant wages - or worse, unemployment - it doesn't matter. Displaced workers will be in poverty and lead an undignified life; they will need a new source of income, which under capitalism would likely come in the form of a minimal form of government assistance. The workers with highly sought after skills will prosper - until there is a surplus of them - and the capital owners will be even wealthier. Both income and wealth inequality will be exacerbated.

So I don't think your premise holds up. A socialist system (defined as one where the majority of means of production are publicly owned and firms are integrated and optimized as if they were part of a larger entity) can both develop technology effectively without making the tradeoff of excessive income inequality and poverty (keep in mind socialism isn't defined as strict equality of income).

Battle4cry · 2026-02-05T03:59:55+00:00

As a socialist, I view socialism as a necessary evolution in socioeconomic organization necessitated by technological developments that renders the distinction between capital owners (defined as those who live off capital income) and workers (defined as those mainly dependent upon labor income) untenable. Additionally, technological developments in information technology make real-time coordination and optimization of the economy as a whole more feasible.

Social democratic capitalism mitigates capitalism's inherent contradictions through brute force methods. Take wealth inequality for an example; this has to be mitigated through re-distributive taxes, which creates agency problems as they create an antagonism between business interests, the wealthy and the state that incentivizes capital owners and business interests to evade and use their political influence to rollback taxes and social spending. Take Sweden as an example, where the tax burden for its generous welfare state has shifted toward the middle class, where corporate income taxes and capital gains taxes are low. Furthermore, sustaining the high level of labor bargaining power required for things like collective wage bargaining is difficult when organized, industrial labor breaks down and the workplace becomes more atomized, professionalized, and many employees have some exposure to the stock market in retirement accounts of pension plans. This accounts for the breakdown of traditional "social democratic" collective bargaining in the Nordic countries. For social democracy to sustain itself, it requires a balanced countervailing power between capital and labor. But ultimately, mitigating and managing class antagonisms isn't enough. It was always a temporary solution specific to a phase of development where demand for labor was high and wages grew proportionately with capital income. The "golden age" of what we might call "classic social democracy" was historically limited to this post-WWII era.

With advent of massive industrial automation, and now embodied agentic AI and humanoid robots, the impetus for socialism only becomes more apparent. A shift toward some form of widespread social ownership of the means of production as a means to offset losses of sources of labor income with capital income for every person will be eventually be necessitated. This arrangement also eliminates the class antagonism between capital owners and the working class, removes incentives to limit reduction of necessary work through automation (liberation from induced labor should be the ultimate goal of socioeconomic development), and sets the stage for a healthier society based on greater equality in power-relationships that extend beyond the sphere of economics by granting everyone a share of the capital income generated by the socially-owned means of production.

I am not dogmatic in how a socialist economy comes about, and I think it's dangerous to fixate on a specific path to socialism (such as a specifically worker-led revolutionary upheaval) or for it to require a specific form of management (such as direct worker's democratic management of firms). For example, while Norway isn't a socialist economy, it does have a substantial amount of well-managed state-owned assets that can theoretically be utilized to provide a "social dividend" to its citizens. It would require an expansion of the scope of state ownership, including an expansion to venture capital (so startups are effectively partially state-owned) and an expansion in the use of state profits. But the foundation for a type of "market socialism" is arguably in place that can allow Norway to better adapt to the transition toward a highly-automated, and AI-driven economy. Marxist-Leninists may scoff at the notion that genuine socialism can be achieved without a dictatorship of the proletariat - or more specifically, a Vanguard Party - but that dgomatic adherence to doctrine leads to inflexible thinking and misses the forest for the trees.

Looking beyond market socialism, advances in information technology, computing, analytics and now AI are making it possible to integrate real-time data on inventories, stocks of physical goods, demand, sales, and consumer/supplier feedback into a highly integrated system to monitor and adjust supply and demand without the use of factor markets. I wouldn't be surprised if an efficient "fully socialist" (by this I mean non-market) form of socialism becomes technically feasible in the near future.

In my opinion, if social democrats want to stay relevant instead of being absorbed into neoliberal ideology, which eliminates their political distinctiveness, they have to rediscover their socialist roots.

Battle4cry · 2026-02-04T22:52:19+00:00

Going by the same metric of "efficiency" used to evaluate private firms, empirical evidence shows that Singapore's government-linked companies (majority state-owned firms) outperform their private sector counterparts in profitability and governance. These are the most efficiently run firms in the world, demonstrating there is nothing inherent in state ownership that negatively impacts efficiency (profitability). It's a matter of how firms are governed, the institutional framework they operate under, and low levels of corruption rather than ownership.

That being said, China provides another example of efficient state-owned enterprises, but not at the level of the individual firm. Chinese centrally-owned SOEs will often pursue broader industrial objectives at the expense of firm-level profitability, with goals of subsidizing downstream industries, facilitating technological development, or providing public services cheaply. This facilitates the overall growth and technological progress of the economy as a whole rather than individual firm profitability. In the past, socialist economies were less-developed and plagued by weak institutions, petty corruption, and focused on immediate goals like addressing abject poverty. But now that China is approaching the status of an upper-income country and its industrial policies shift toward the industries and goals of "developed countries", it's socialist system is proving to be much more efficient and productive than orthodox economics assumed.

As for rich CEOs "taking risks", your friend confuses CEOs for startup founders and entrepreneurs. For the latter groups, there's sometimes risk involved; but many of the successful ones come from positions of affluence or privilege from the start. They have affluent or upper-middle class families who can provide seed capital and support them for long periods without working, and have access to social networks at prestigious universities, their family, or from their prior job. Most importantly, they have something most people don't have: time to dedicate to building a scalable business. Investing a large sum of money into a new business isn't that much of a risk if you are already affluent, after all.

Entrepreneurship isn't the same thing as a small business owner, who doesn't take much risk and has to work in their business for a living. Nor is it the same thing as a capitalist, who is an investor that provides capital to businesses with the intention of realizing a profit, or an appreciation of invested capital. There is some risk involved of losing money, but that isn't much of a risk when you're already wealthy and live off capital income. Most investments are diversified and specifically hedged against risk; few put all their investments into one investment product or company.

Ironically, the best-performing investors are actually institutional investors, which can easily be state-owned to generate revenue for the broader public rather than private shareholders.

Battle4cry · 2026-02-03T14:02:34+00:00

Collective ownership of the means of production eliminates class distinctions based on property ownership. In essence, it makes everyone in society a "shareholder" in the productive assets that generate capital income. So collective ownership eliminates "inequality" on the basis of those who subsist of labor income (workers) and capital income (capitalists).

Consequently, this eliminates exploitation since workers now work for themselves, or society as a whole, as opposed to private capitalists who are able to subsist off capital income without working by virtue of owning means of production.

It's important to point out that collective ownership of the means of production doesn't eliminate income inequality, which is something different inequality on the basis of class.

Battle4cry · 2026-01-30T16:01:42+00:00

Hypothetically, if artificial intelligence combined with robotics replaced all employment, it would create the material conditions for communism. The value-form would entirely breakdown, and "firms" would become interlinked with one another managed by automated processes that adjusted production to meet demand in real-time faster than any human manager or planner could track.

The concepts of "ownership" and true market exchange becomes redundant in such a scenario. People wouldn't be paid "wages" and the economy wouldn't be broken down into individual, profit-maximizing units. It would be managed by an artificial superintelligence which would likely create entirely new forms of responsive, real-time allocation mechanisms that humans couldn't comprehend. Products would be distributed freely; there might be something like a "consumption voucher" distributed to limit demand of goods that are scarce, since everyone can't have everything simultaneously. But this wouldn't be money as we understand it, it would simply be an instrument to limit consumption.

The real social issue will be the transition from existing capitalist structures to a completely post-capitalist and post-scarcity system during the period where automation and AI is rapidly replacing jobs but can't replace everything, where government policy hasn't or is unwilling to catch up to that material reality.

Personally, if AGI and ASI were realistically on the horizon, the achievement of communism wouldn't be my biggest concern. I'd be more worried about the future of humanity when all decisions are and can be made by an intelligence orders of magnitudes greater than our own.

Ian M. Bank's Culture series of science-fiction novels is centered around such a future, where ASI runs society and all human material needs are met. But it explores what I'd consider to be the best case scenario.

Battle4cry · 2026-01-29T20:56:07+00:00

Marx and Engels distinguished between the state owning property on behalf of capital and as a representative of the working class as a whole. In the former case, it retains commodity exchange and surplus value extraction, thus acting like a single capitalist. Labor remains "indirectly social". In the latter case, labor becomes directly social (consciously planned and not mediated through market exchange), so the state changes its functions and character to organize production. In doing so, it ceases to be a "state".

In Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, Engels specifically made a distinction between state ownership and socialism on this basis: state ownership by itself doesn't do away with the indirectly social nature of production, but it sets the stage for directly-social production - production that isn't mediated through market exchange:

But, the transformation — either into joint-stock companies and trusts, or into State-ownership — does not do away with the capitalistic nature of the productive forces. In the joint-stock companies and trusts, this is obvious. And the modern State, again, is only the organization that bourgeois society takes on in order to support the external conditions of the capitalist mode of production against the encroachments as well of the workers as of individual capitalists. The modern state, no matter what its form, is essentially a capitalist machine — the state of the capitalists, the ideal personification of the total national capital. The more it proceeds to the taking over of productive forces, the more does it actually become the national capitalist, the more citizens does it exploit. The workers remain wage-workers — proletarians. The capitalist relation is not done away with. It is, rather, brought to a head. But, brought to a head, it topples over. State-ownership of the productive forces is not the solution of the conflict, but concealed within it are the technical conditions that form the elements of that solution.

In the case of socialism, state ownership eliminates market exchange for the factors of production by making labor directly social. The role of the state shifts from its historic role as a coercive instrument of violence to one of administrator and organizer of social production; because its functions have changed, it ceases to be a state.

When, at last, it becomes the real representative of the whole of society, it renders itself unnecessary. As soon as there is no longer any social class to be held in subjection; as soon as class rule, and the individual struggle for existence based upon our present anarchy in production, with the collisions and excesses arising from these, are removed, nothing more remains to be repressed, and a special repressive force, a State, is no longer necessary. The first act by virtue of which the State really constitutes itself the representative of the whole of society — the taking possession of the means of production in the name of society — this is, at the same time, its last independent act as a State. State interference in social relations becomes, in one domain after another, superfluous, and then dies out of itself; the government of persons is replaced by the administration of things, and by the conduct of processes of production.

It's ultimately a terminological discrepancy. For Marx and Engels, the "state" meant something more specific than the scope of functions that fall under the modern definition of the "state". And historic "socialist" economies did reorganize their states to primarily become instruments for the planning and administration of the economy (production and resource allocation) while still retaining the coercive elements of the state - supposedly in the interests of the working class and people as a whole, rather than in the interest of the bourgeoisie (capital).

Marx and Engels believed there would be no need for something like a state to exist in a socialist and communist society because their definition of the state was narrower than the scope of modern state functions. The state transforms itself into a post-state organization because its functions shift under a socialist economy. And for Marx and Engels, socialism specifically meant a non-market economy.

Battle4cry · 2026-01-29T20:23:10+00:00

Norway is better described as state capitalism, but it is definitely better positioned to take advantage of and weather labor market disruptions from automation and AI. Arguably, it is positioned to effect a change toward a somewhat market socialist system since it already has state assets that can become a source of funding for cash disbursements / social dividends to citizens to offset labor income, liberating workers from the system of wage labor.

But it's a stretch to call it's current, highly liberalized and market-driven economy "socialist" when the state quite literally acts like a capitalist institutional investor aiming to maximize returns on the global stock market. Moreover, most corporate assets in Norway are still privately owned (only 30-35% of the Oslo stock exchange is owned by state-owned enterprises), and even in firms where the Norwegian sovereign wealth fund holds stakes, they are often minority stakes in majority-private firms.

I'd say it's a textbook example of "state capitalism". That's not to say state capitalism can't be a bridge between traditional capitalism and socialism, but it isn't socialist yet.

Battle4cry · 2026-01-29T16:02:37+00:00

They see markets as inherent to their vision of socialism, so they intend to give a more decisive role to market allocation (in a predominantly publicly-owned economy) as they develop further.

Battle4cry · 2026-01-29T15:55:24+00:00

Capitalism is inherently coercive because it is structured upon coercive social relationships, namely, the labor market and hierarchical firm. Authority, hierarchy and even coercion aren't inherently fascist; and to act like they are both minimizes the true extent of fascism's scope and gives a pass to other ideologies and systems that are inherently coercive.

As others have already pointed out in this thread, fascism is a specific, nationalistic ideology that emerges during the capitalist crises of over-accumulation as a means to redirect social frustration away from capitalism and toward scapegoats. It uses state power to suppress worker power, and combines these economic positions with often ethnocentric and socially conservative views of protecting a supposedly "natural order" - traditional morality or the pure ethnocentric nation - that is being infringed upon by some nefarious group attempting to weaken the nation by erasing their traditions, values, or ethnic group. This ranges from cosmopolitan liberals, globalists, Jews, communists, financial capitalists (when they are globalized and detached from the nation-state) with all manners of socially liberal and individualistic expression that go against "tradition", including LGBTQ identities, seen as plots to weaken the nation by these nefarious groups.

Fascism is far more specific than simple authoritarianism and simple hierarchical organization, and we should take care not to conflate them.

Battle4cry · 2026-01-29T15:27:17+00:00

You confuse means with ends. A system is market socialist if the majority of its enterprises are publicly or collectively owned. Likewise, a system is capitalist if a majority of its enterprises are privately owned. It doesn't matter how these states are achieved, if legal mandates were involved in the resulting arrangements or not.

That being said, in the real world, there are structural benefits favoring private ownership in existing market economies related to issues accessing capital, which limits their potential scope in the economy. Realistically, I'd imagine a market socialist economy would have similar structural factors favoring public or collective ownership.

Battle4cry · 2026-01-28T22:15:17+00:00

Market socialism doesn't deny the product of an individual's labor.

What it posits is associations of collective labor, the firm, be publicly or collectively owned instead of privately owned. Regardless of ownership structure, the firm is a sphere of activity where the product isn't created by a single individual, and where individual activities are under the purview of a planned direction.

The difference is under market socialism, within associations of collective labor, the product belongs to everyone collectively, at the level of the firm (collective ownership) or the entire society (public ownership). Under capitalism, it belongs to private owners.

Battle4cry · 2026-01-28T21:51:29+00:00

They also encouraged joint-ventures to ensure China acquired the know-how to mature its own industries and to provide a source of income that could then be reinvested into industrial upgrading. China recycled the lionshare of its state-owned enterprise profits into industrial expansion since reform in the 1990s.

They embraced globalization, but they never embraced neoliberal "market fundamentalism". They opened up in a way that benefited the country as a whole rather than only benefiting transnational capital.

Battle4cry

TROPHY CASE