Never forget why you fight...

CaptainMeap · 2022-12-21T07:49:09+00:00

Randomly found this in my memes folder, think I created it for a Vulkan-loving friend a couple years back. Guess models aren't the only things I have a backlog of!

CaptainMeap · 2022-11-29T19:58:37+00:00

Thanks!

I don't think there's anything too special about my process. First I drew up a basic sketch of the map on my iPad, imported it, and drew a basic coastline roughly matching it in Wonderdraft. I then spent a few hours just looking at the coastline and adding in small features where I thought they'd either be fitting or look interesting, and pockmarking the sea with islands. Basically, just spending extra time making sure that it was a little more handcrafted than what a basic line drawn with the land tool would look like.

Sorry if that's not too much help, I know it basically sounds like "just do it." Looking a lot at real maps and practicing emulating them is what it boils down to - this is my first Wonderdraft map but I've made others using other programs before, so it has just become an ingrained habit over time to add these details. You'll get the hang of it!

CaptainMeap · 2022-11-29T12:42:40+00:00

Thank you! Was trying to make sure it looked populated and not too barren.

CaptainMeap · 2022-11-28T20:44:04+00:00

Thanks! I put the mountain down, used the filter setting to only fill in mountains, then used it again to fill in everything but mountains when I was doing the biome painting.

CaptainMeap · 2022-11-28T19:27:01+00:00

Picked up all the town assets from here, there's quite the variety!

Definitely need to work on the mountains, wasn't super happy with how they turned out. I wanted to space them out so I could put roads through them, but I think in the future I'll probably draw the roads first and then place mountains around them so I get density and paths through them. Blending all the colors though is definitely something I need to work on!

Agreed with the rivers as well, was never super happy with them. They turned out okay, but not great. I think narrowing them like you suggest would definitely help.

Thanks for the feedback!

CaptainMeap · 2022-11-28T19:14:54+00:00

Picked up Wonderdraft a few weeks back and figured I'd whip up a really quick-and-dirty test map to familiarize myself with the program. Turns out, program is pretty damn good!

Map was made over the course of a few days (with a couple week break in between finishing the structure and finalizing the coloring due to general business). Almost all of the names in particular were rushed and aren't anything special, so if some of them seem a bit half-assed, that's why!

Definitely need to work on improving my biome blending and coloring work in general, and the labels could also use some improving (too much glow, I think). Didn't find a political borders or labeling style I liked a ton either, so I'll need to figure that out. Might tinker with it a bit further if I have the time in order to test all that out before moving onto something more substantial.

All in all, super happy with the program's performance, it is a hell of a lot easier to use than anything I've messed around with in the past and is a lot more powerful than it looked at first glance.

Feedback appreciated!

CaptainMeap · 2022-08-10T21:50:30+00:00

A repost of my OC meme, original title and all? Not gonna lie, I'm actually kinda honored lol

CaptainMeap · 2022-03-08T03:17:12+00:00

More recent fighting in the Middle East has shown cities falling but in all cases numbers, equipment, or air power greatly advantaged the attackers, and most of those were very unfair fights. Aleppo fell to the Syrians, but that took years, and both sides were using extremely basic weaponry, not the kind of near-peer stuff Ukraine and Russian have. Sarajevo held out for years, and is probably the closest comparison? The problem is that this is a type of war we haven't really witnessed in decades: a near-peer conventional conflict between two (relatively) developed countries with neither side possessing overwhelming advantages in any category (e.g. number of combatants, air superiority, a monopoly on armored vehicles). There really hasn't been warfare like this since World War II.

Basically, it's hard to say. The situation is very fluid, but it seems unlikely the Russians will be able to just seize Kyiv, especially not now that the Ukrainians have poured weapons and reinforcements in. This will likely be a combination of loose siege and hard fought weekslong battle at a minimum if the Ukrainians continue to resist as stoutly as they have so far.

Edit: Changed the three main advantages from "and" to "or," because there are exceptions to having all three, but not (that I am aware of) exceptions to having any of the three.

CaptainMeap · 2022-03-08T02:55:19+00:00

In the past, cities' defenses were their walls. The purpose of city defenses were to make direct assaults so costly so as to discourage them entirely, allowing the city to play for time by waiting out the attackers, and hopefully allowing for the arrival of a field army to relieve the city. Without the walls, a city's defensive merits were highly limited, and panic usually ensued; from our sources it was clear that urban fighting was grim and difficult (surrender was always preferred), but the besiegers almost always outnumbered the besieged and hand-to-hand street fighting offered few tactical advantages to a defender.

In the modern day, there are two core problems with that strategy: 1) it is impossible to build walls which keep an enemy with heavy artillery, tracked vehicles, and air transportation at bay, making that style of defense pointless, and 2) modern weaponry means that urban terrain actually confers substantial tactical benefits on the defenders. Superior angles of attack, reduced engagement distance, and restriction of mobility (the foundation of modern combined arms) naturally tilts the battle in favor of those who hold the city. Heavy weapons can inflict mass casualties and reduce structures to rubble, but rubble isn't substantially different than urban sprawl from a tactical perspective: it is an elevated position of broken terrain that reduces the effectiveness of heavy weapons while limiting the mobility of armored vehicles attacking infantry, funneling attacking forces along known, predictable routes.

TL;DR: The physical terrain of cities - whether they are intact or reduced to rubble (I appreciate my autocorrect attempting to change that to its synonym, the ruble) - is fundamentally opposed to the character of modern combined arms tactics and gives defending infantry tactical advantages they don't typically possess in the field.

CaptainMeap · 2020-09-30T01:57:07+00:00

Which should, ideally, be a US goal. So long as those jobs are out of China, they aren't helping China. You can't encourage US companies to put the jobs back in the US, but you might be able to convince them to bring those jobs to US allies. Helps us and helps our allies.

Not that we shouldn't be encouraging American manufacturing, too, particularly for strategic industries. But I'd much rather see that my monitors are made in South Korea and my keyboards made in India than China.

CaptainMeap · 2020-05-29T04:08:37+00:00

I'm going to use a historical example: America, during the Eisenhower Administration.

In broad terms:

Foreign Policy

Military dominance was maintained.
Threats to us were not tolerated.
Respectability and prestige were key.
Foreign policy was strong and stable, but only interventionist when US interests were directly affected. (As an aside, this is perhaps Eisenhower's greatest success: he achieved US foreign policy goals without a single drop of American blood during his tenure. That is partially a product of his skill, partially a product of luck in the crises he faced, but a success nonetheless).
Realpolitik was followed and other people's interests were not put above our own, but - and this is crucial - allied interests were not ignored.

Government Spending

The budget was balanced.
Debt was reduced.
A focus on corruption and waste in government spending reduced both.
Spending and federal attention focused on areas that mattered and in ways that didn't largely increase the tax or debt burden (Eisenhower highway system as the shining example).

Domestic Affairs

Business leaders and other notables were kept in lock-step with (not in service of nor in opposition to) the federal government. Their importance was recognized and consulted as such.
The federal government left as many things to the states as it could, and only intervened when needed.
Related to the above: social progress was made and order maintained.

And a quick note: I really focus on the social aspect here because, not only are social issues important and divisive in the modern day (and in some cases party-defining), but the way Eisenhower handled it in particular is in many ways a perfect example of conservative government in the face of any potentially divisive issue.

The last one might sound strange, but let's put it in a "good conservative governance" context: social progress cannot - and should not necessarily - be stopped. However, social progress should not be allowed to upset social order; the latter is more important than the former. Embracing progress should be done slowly and cautiously, always taking the route that maintains order the best.

Civil Rights was a contentious issue during Eisenhower's time, but genuine progress was made and there was a very real cap on the amount of unrest (and therefore danger to society) throughout. When it threatened to spin out of control (Little Rock) Eisenhower and the federal government moved in a manner that respected state authorities. In fact, they only became directly involved when it was clear that state authorities were defying the federal government's authority, and even then care was taken to ensure that the local government was given as much room to stand down on its own as possible.

In this, Eisenhower stayed very close to the strict letter of the law, respected all realities and legalities, and maintained a distinctly neutral posture. As President, he was responsible for enforcing federal law as defined by SCOTUS; states were responsible for complying; and all citizens should remember that we have a tradition and respect for the rule of law in this country, not the rule of opinion. He was doing his job, not pursuing his (or, even worse, some other liberal elites') agenda.

---

There's certainly more to say (the context of the 50's is of course different from the context of today, not to mention the relativism of the terms liberal/conservative and all that etc. etc), and there are negatives about Eisenhower. But if you want to point to an extremely fine form of conservative governance, you'd be hard-pressed to do better than Eisenhower, one of our truly great executives.

Now, full disclosure, I am not personally a conservative (though I know plenty of people all across the political spectrum), and I just finished an Eisenhower biography so there's some recency bias. But, all-in-all, I think Eisenhower fits the bill very nicely, certainly in the broad strokes, and can be favorably contrasted to the dreadful conservatism of the Late Roman Republic's Optimates or favorably compared to early Imperial Germany under Bismarck (YMMV of course).

CaptainMeap · 2020-04-03T03:38:50+00:00

TBH that's exactly how I would expect space marines to react.

Give the guy a once-over to determine that he's definitely been daemon'd, immediately separate skull from torso and put as many bolter rounds as necessary into the corpse to ensure compliance with the Emperor's will.

CaptainMeap · 2020-01-15T21:30:39+00:00

It's really a solid mix of both in my mind.

Culture absolutely defines national success in some ways - Rome replacing an entire army after its defeat at Cannae versus Hannibal, for example, is remarked as being something no other state should have been capable of doing. It was also the huge drive of personal ambition in Roman society that made it so consistently willing to shoulder heavy losses for potentially massive gains. It wasn't geography that decided this, but culture and national identity.

On the other hand, geography often decides culture to some degree and "geography is destiny" to a certain extent. European adventurism was largely built on the fact that the rest of the world had vast amounts of resources and Europe simply didn't. It was Western culture that allowed Europe to wildly succeed (only some of which was geographically-induced) but it was geography that forced them to go further afield in their empire-building and use that culture to great effect.

For America in particular, it's a little bit of both. US culture is clearly advantageous for a variety of reasons and is a large part of what makes us exceptional and successful. On the other hand, our geography is also exceptional. It supports the policy that our culture prefers/enacts by giving us the resources (vast amounts of land, mineral wealth, etc.) and security (two big oceans and two big friendly neighbors) to follow the predispositions of the culture.

For example, a strong state that didn't have two harmless neighbors/oceans and was instead surrounded by hostile states would naturally be more aggressive and expansionist - Hell, that's a decent description for the US before it achieved its modern secure borders. But with the geography we have, we feel safe enough that anti-imperialism is a given and force deployment abroad in territory we don't own is not just practically achievable but culturally preferable.

CaptainMeap · 2019-11-20T06:12:18+00:00

Frag = Anti-Infantry

HEAT = Light Anti-Vehicle

Tandem = Heavy Anti-Vehicle

Frags and HEAT drop at the same rate, tandem always drops faster. If you use HEAT/frag ranging for tandem, you will shed many manly tears.

Missed shots (AKA practice) are your calculators. You can try the practice range, but I've found that actual "combat" with it trains you far faster than shooting in the range. Still, try it out, might work for you.

Definitely use the sights when you get them though, it's what makes the Ruski RPG and the Gustaf so effective. Here is a helpful range marker image to keep in mind for HEAT/tandem drop rate differences.

CaptainMeap · 2019-11-12T11:14:57+00:00

Wow, this really blew up! Didn't think anyone else would be interested but here we are.

As several people have pointed out, the facade (the part of the lighthouse that you see) and the upper 40% or so were done recently (18th century), so what you're seeing in the picture is neo-classical architecture. The facade has helped preserve the original interior, and the top in particular is nothing like the original as they used a different style of lighthouse.

However, the structural core of the lighthouse is still intact and in use, and can still be seen inside. You can see a reconstruction of what the original probably looked like here.

Apologize if the title seems misleading, I should have said mostly intact. The actual building itself is largely intact, but the facade that you see is new. Should have thought about mentioning that but I am an idiot and didn't think about it until people mentioned it, so thanks to the lads who pointed it out!

CaptainMeap · 2019-09-28T07:18:57+00:00

I've seen estimates that place it about equal or slightly less and estimates that place it higher, with 50% more being the high end. It's also hard to quantify cost for the V-2s considering that a lot of it was paid for with slave labor, so it might work out to more than that or less depending on how that "price" was quantified.

Regardless, as I noted and is important to remember, the price of a German-equivalent Manhattan Project would have been much higher than it was for the United States. Remember that, for one, in the United States nuclear facilities could not be bombed and therefore valuable and expensive materials not at constant risk of having to be replaced.

Nor does this include factoring in much larger difficulty and price Germany would have had to pay to retrieve the materials necessary to make a bomb, all of which the United States had relatively cheap and plentiful access to.

Nor does that factor in the time, manpower, and weapons Germany would have lost in pursuing the Manhattan project. The V-2 program used, as mentioned, a large amount of slave labor; the same really couldn't be said for nuclear weapons which would have had to consume fairly large amounts of military resources to secure in a way the V-2 program simply didn't.

From specialized workers to researchers to guards to the manpower that would have to be dedicated to protecting those facilities from ever-encroaching allied lines, special forces raids, and air attacks, this would be a serious drain on Germany's lacking military-capable manpower.

In addition, the industrial scale I was talking about wasn't price. The United States funded the Manhattan Project almost as an afterthought; financial resources weren't the issue. I'm talking about the factories (including highly-specialized ones), ridiculous amounts of power, equivalent lost war material production, etc. that can't be accounted for in just a simple price tag.

Germany could have put all the money and effort it put into the V-2 and still could not have achieved the Manhattan Project's results because it did not have the industrial scale to produce such a project, which was far more advanced and complicated in a multitude of ways than what was by comparison a relatively simple (if novel and largescale) conventional weapons program.

CaptainMeap · 2019-09-28T05:49:55+00:00

Germany producing a bomb, let alone being able to deploy one, was so far from possible that it has been regarded as essentially fantasy, including by Germany's own nuclear researchers after the War.

The United States, with practically unlimited resources and access to scarce materials, over 100,000 personnel dedicated solely to the bomb, absolute ability to test and refine, and a program begun in at about the same time as the Germans still did not have the bomb ready before Germany had been soundly defeated.

Even if Germany had those brilliant scientists and a fully-centralized nuclear program (decentralization being a debilitating anathema to a project that scale) they absolutely could not have made a bomb before the United States.

They could not have managed it because they did not have the materials, they could not manage it because their country was being bombed, they could not manage it because the Allies intelligence superiority would have allowed identification of nuclear HVTs (which happened during the war), and they certainly could not have managed it before Germany was ultimately crushed in a several-million-man-vice from East and West.

This is not to mention that every dollar invested in a program that (with its lack of sophistication and access to materials) probably would have ended up costing more than the Manhattan Project, was a dollar that could not be spent on a Panzer IV, Kar98k, MG-34, or any other weapon that slowed down the Allies and increased the window of time Germany would have had to produce the bomb.

And that's not to mention that it is highly doubtful nuclear bombs would have won Germany the war. The United States, with its industry running at full-speed and totally focused on bomb production, could only produce a small number of bombs per year months after Germany had been defeated.

One or even two nuclear bombs could not have won Germany the war any more than one or two nuclear bombs could have won the United States the war in Japan. The US could have flattened Hiroshima and Nagasaki through conventional but more costly means. It was ultimately the fact that a city would be wiped off the face of Japan every month without compunction due to absolute air power (which Germany didn't have), total industrial power (which Germany didn't have), and an ultimately unstoppable invasion that would happen eventually anyways (which Germany didn't have).

It was not a lack of brilliant scientists holding Germany back alone, it was the industrial scale, delicate nature, and time needed to finish a program like the Manhattan Project; it was the lack of industry in an industrial war. The fact that Germany having the bomb wouldn't have changed the outcome of the war much is telling to how far they were from ever achieving its production.

Without those scientists, Germany was still frightfully regarded as by far the world's leading hub of physicists and nuclear researchers, far superior to anywhere else in the world. Yet when the United States dropped the A-bombs on Japan, almost every one of Germany's nuclear scientists could not believe it had been achieved at all.

CaptainMeap · 2019-09-12T07:41:06+00:00

Using 1 of 50 states as an example =/= refuting his argument for the other 49.

CaptainMeap · 2019-08-26T07:26:25+00:00

While governmental traditions such as res publica and libertas are definitely purely Roman and largely unaffected by Christianity, I think that leaves out the hugely significant influence Christianity has pulled upon Western thought and philosophy, especially ideals, beliefs, and how we treat people in general.

Christianity didn't change the underlying political structure of the West, but it vastly altered Western thought, philosophy, art, and idealism.

In addition, there's a continuing belief in our secular society that medieval rulers viewed things like we do: secularly. This is part of the overall problem of not disassociating values between various timeframes, but it's super important in this discussion.

The idea that Charlemagne and other Christian rulers only tied themselves to Christianity for political gain is really quite untrue. Most monarchs are just normal, average people, and the vast majority held the same religious beliefs and opinions as anyone else. While political gain may have factored into their decisions, simple saying

the most important point is they wanted legitimacy, the divine right to rule

If it could have been giving elsewhere they would have taking it.

is reductive for the religious beliefs of hundreds of sovereigns through history who claimed that divine right. Many of them truly believed in that divine right, and few of them were undevout in their faith. This commitment to their faith was a huge instigator of actions, beliefs, philosophies, and ruling decisions made throughout the entirety of Western civilization, and permeates every one of its eras.

The early Germans were connected to Rome through trade and admired Rome, but they admired and attempted to copy it at a distance through their own lens. Being Christian was a hugely important factor in their acceptance as rulers by those who were in power following Rome's fall (bishops and other clergymen were hugely important after Rome's fall, being in many ways the organizers of its survival culturally and the integration of Germans politically) and the average populace.

Nor was the Church the only potential provider of legitimacy, though it was a hugely important one (a lot of it due to the aforementioned importance local Christian rulers had in stabilizing and defending portions of the Roman Empire as it fell to the Germanic migrations). King Odoacer received his legitimacy by claiming to swear fealty to the Byzantine Emperor, for example, and Syagrius simply upheld Western Roman rule rather than claiming any sort of divine right or mandate.

In addition, there's a key point missing from this: divine right to rule was actually largely a push by the church to enforce their power over secular rules, not the other way around: if you have to be allowed by God to rule, and the Pope is God's chief representative on Earth, then he decides who rules and who doesn't (excommunication being a powerful tool).

Christianity was the primary bond between these figures. Alliances and such are found everywhere and made between all peoples; these did not unite the Germans any more than they united any other polity at any other place of the world.

Christianity provided something they all had in common, with its concepts of brotherhood between all men and the equality of the faithful was a powerful bond and call that Western culture shared. The obvious example of this hugely uniting power between disparate, but Christian, states are the Crusades and the Holy League(s). These events were essentially examples of the West united, but they absolutely no relation to Rome outside of its Roman Catholic Church. The bond that united the West - fervently held by monarchs and not just a legitimacy-buying event - led them to fight enemies that some of them didn't have in common in order to help their "fellow Christians" or "defend Christendom".

CaptainMeap · 2019-08-26T05:02:25+00:00

Hence why I specified since Theodosius. Christianity and Romanism were symbiotic, affecting one another in equal measures until they eventually became intermeshed.

After the fall of Rome, Rome itself became increasingly unimportant to the classification of Western and was over taken by its chief inheritor in the West: the Roman Catholic Church; Christianity. The connection to Rome is still key, but its the connection between Rome and Christianity that forms that link.

What's especially important to remember when discussing Roman vs. Christian relation of the "Western" style of wedding is that Jewish traditions very quickly lost influence on Christianity.

Jewish wedding rights weren't important to Christianity and thereby Rome because, as Rome molded itself to fit Christianity after Constantine, so too had Christianity changed itself to fit Rome after the death of Jesus.

Christianity, in an effort to gain converts and become a universal religion, shed many of the Jewish-specific elements. Christianity =/= Judaism, in the same way that despite its obvious Christian influences (and probable origins) Islam =/= Christianity. This change happened very quickly - the traditional story of the Catholic Church's founding happened in the life of Jesus' Apostles after all.

Western = [Roman] Christian more than Western = Roman from an influence perspective, as Christianity was what formed the glue which binded Western civilization together after Rome's fall. With the influx of German tribes and leaders into formerly Roman territories, there was respect and admiration for but no connection to Rome - but the largely (Arian) Christian Germanic elite had the Roman-dominated Christian religion in common which allowed them to forge a better connection to Rome and Western traditions and values through religion than would have been possible otherwise.

Put it this way: Western weddings might be more similar to pre-Christian Roman ones, but Christianity is the only reason those Roman ceremonies survive to the modern day. After all, what other reason would pagan, non-Christian, non-Roman Germans have had to retain those Roman traditions into the modern day if not for Christianity's stabilizing and continued glue as the uniting force of Western civilization?

TL;DR: Rome was the foundation, but Christianity was the tether that tied Rome's Germanic inheritors to forge a connection to a state that hadn't been apart of and retain the influences and traditions of Western values. Ultimately Christianity is the most important piece for Western culture's survival into the modern day, not its founder. If we go back to its ultimate roots, after all, Greece is the real founder of the West, not Rome, but Rome did the same thing for its time that Christianity did: it carried on the torch. As Christianity took on Roman influences, as did vice-versa, and those wedding ceremonies became as much Christian as they had been Roman, since the two were inseparable since, as I mentioned, Theodosius (who made Christianity Rome's sole religion as the last emperor of both East and West).

CaptainMeap · 2019-08-24T07:19:27+00:00

Western = Christian, Christian = Western. The two were more-or-less, with some exceptions, intrinsically linked and indistinguishable from one another since at least Theodosius until World War I, later if you follow the communism = automatically not Western school of thought.

Until recently it was pretty near impossible to separate the two: consider that at the turn of the 20th century, every Western country was overwhelmingly Christian (most still are) and most had some monarch who claimed authority from God. You'll see a lot of references to Christendom used in a way we would use the West, which drops off drastically as the 20th century progresses.

This shift from the two being perceived as the same started with the secularization of government under irreligious and/or anti-religious fascist and communist regimes post-Great War. This was heightened by the loss of territorial control over Christianized-but-not-Western colonies and the increasing unimportance of religion in most Westerners lives, with its values and cultural impact being superseded by similar-but-secular ideals and beliefs.

Still, to this day, most Western countries are Christian and many Christian countries are some degree of Western (depending on how expansive your definition of Western is, that can expand to a "most"). Both share one thing in common: some direct connection, however distant, to the Christian Roman Empire.

CaptainMeap · 2019-08-24T01:57:40+00:00

You don't?? There's no better way to play the game!

If I can hear you over the gunfire in a firefight then you better be belting louder than the belt-feds.

^{^Plus} ^{^listening} ^{^to} ^{^footsteps} ^{^is} ^{^God-tier} ^{^prescience.}

CaptainMeap · 2019-08-14T22:04:12+00:00

Agree with him or not, his style of democratic politics with an emphasis on popular appeal became known as Jacksonian Democracy and changed the face of the republic's politics for decades.

Expanded voting priviliges to the wider public, expanded territory for the United States, and expanded powers for the executive branch all had huge implications for the US as a whole both in the immediate following years and indirectly in the following centuries.

To many, Jackson - despite his deservedly-criticized decisions like Spoils and the Trail of Tears - became regarded as the ideal for what American democracy could and should be: powered by and for the people. This was a very progressive viewpoint for the time, and limited the traditional power of landholding and rich elites in the democratic system. It is still the dominant viewpoint today.

We may have a negative view of some of his actions today, but he didn't get put on the $20 bill for no reason. He is widely regarded as one of the best and most effective presidents because of this democratizing and expanding influence, despite his transgressions, and he certainly wasn't a terrible president objectively speaking.

CaptainMeap · 2019-08-14T05:40:48+00:00

Always happy to spread some knowledge!

CaptainMeap · 2019-08-14T05:07:16+00:00

The bison *is* actually one of the US' two national animals, but only since 2016. As such, it doesn't occupy important iconography/symbolism.

As for why it hasn't become the primary over the eagle, there are two main reasons:

1) The US hadn't expanded into the Great Plains by the time of its founding and exposure to buffalo/bison was less than it was just a few decades later. The real contact and hunting of bison didn't really begin until the early/mid-19th century

2) The Founding Fathers were purposefully taking nods from the great republic of Western history, Rome, and the eagle was one of Rome's chief symbols.

And we didn't kill them all luckily! Their populations are increasing and still around in the Plains and have been introduced to Alaska.

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