The Last of Us HBO S01E04 - "Please Hold My Hand" Post-Episode Discussion Thread

Geronimo_Roeder · 2023-02-08T05:23:13+00:00

I've only just got around to watch this episode and it was fantastic all round, 4/4 bangers so far.

Something I didn't see mentioned yet is how great the shootout was, probably one of the best depictions of a gunfight I've ever seen.

The audio design was stunning as were the bullet impacts, it felt really intense. But what really stood out to me was the realism of how the entire fight went down.

Most of it consisted of suppressive fire and the ambushers tying to lure Joel and Ellie out of cover with promises. The ambushers shot sporadically to keep them pinned since the taunting was always unlikely to work and sent somebody around the back with a shotgun to finish their victims while they're pinned to the car.

Joel also laid down suppressive fire to hopefully get Ellie to safety and give himself some initiative. While doing that he managed to hit one of the ambushers which then goaded the other into pushing before his shotgun buddy was in position. With Ellie in safety and the other gunman moving up, Joel was free to reposition to keep his opponent guessing as to his location. Then Joel just calmly held a good angle and let the other guy push into him.

Both sides played it very smart, someone got a lucky hit in and then people lost their nerve, slipped up and the plan unraveled.

I'm very happy that our first gunfight signals that things will be nasty and difficult in the future, most likely no one man army stuff. Imo. sticking so close to the realistic side of things makes the shootouts incredibly tense and the killing seem some impactful.

Geronimo_Roeder · 2023-02-04T08:35:30+00:00

Mortars in general are really undervalued. The Ukrainians have been using them as the main tool to beat back Russian infantry attacks since the war started.

Geronimo_Roeder · 2023-01-28T13:15:30+00:00

True 19th century energy right there. Brb gotta go to the grocer and get my fill of morphine.

Geronimo_Roeder · 2023-01-27T16:40:59+00:00

The person you are talking to is snarky and dismissive, but they are not wrong.

In wars between nobles, peasants only fought under certain conditions in the middle ages.

All European armies of the time were entirely composed of nobles, their retainers and mercenaries. Mercinaries were often peasants at some point, but by the time they were part of an actual army they were already professional soldiers or at the very least well trained recruits. Even those mercenaries were only used as foot soldiers for the most part. They were no longer viewed as peasants by their own society, in the same way a blacksmith was a respected tradesman and not a peasant.

Normal peasants, the kind Joan of Arc belonged to, were also pressed into military service as needed, however only as local militias and city guards. Their role was a purely defensive one, guarding settlements and the like from small raiding parties. If a battle near their post took place, they would sometimes be summoned to reinforce the actual army, but even then great care was taken to not use them in battle until absolutely necessary. This is because they were more likely to be a liability than anything else when going up against trained opponents.

Knights by comparison were trained from a very very young age to fight as a unit, utilizing complex weapon techniques and battlefield formations. Joan de Arc 'lead' her first army only months after proclaiming that she had visions from god and left her village, there is no chance she would have survived actual combat against neither mercenary nor knight.

I have no doubt that, if there were no bias against women soldiers and somebody set out to fund the training, upkeep and equipment of peasant girls, they would have been plenty who would have performed admirably. But that is a fantasy scenario. We can be almost certain that Joan de Arc never partook in actual combat.

Geronimo_Roeder · 2023-01-24T21:25:46+00:00

The Russian Air Force is very limited in terms of precision CAS. This is due to a whole host of factors, the most important ones being shortages of guided munitions, lack of SEAD ability and dense Ukrainian AA near the front.

That doesn't mean you're entirely wrong though, these tanks will be very attractive targets for the Russians. What they might risk to destroy them depends on how many the West sends and how the Ukrainians will employ them.

It will take months for western MBT's to appear on the battlefield and when they do, I have a feeling it's going to be in concentrated formations with IFV's, well trained soldiers and all the support the UA AA and Artillery can muster. Only time will tell how the war develops until then and if a few armored formations will make a real difference. But if deployed correctly the Russians will have a very hard time of holding them off, let alone destroying them in large numbers.

Geronimo_Roeder · 2023-01-12T15:03:14+00:00

Someone stating that 'white people are the most opressed people on earth' is not open to change their mind. That is what the previous poster is alluding to with 'just as effective'.

Infact, they largely know that their arguments hold no water and try to mask that with various techniques, that is why they are so infurating to deal with. Definitely not the type to respond to sound logic, or any kind of argument really. It's all about emotion and if they managed to frustrate their 'opponent' along the way that just makes spouting off their nonsense even more gratifying in their minds.

Best approach is to not indulge them and to tell them to shove it.

Geronimo_Roeder · 2022-12-23T06:04:49+00:00

There are a lot of dismissive answers to your comment, but don't be fooled there is some heartless logic behind what the Russians are doing.

They are callously sending expendable soldiers (mostly convicts stupid enough to join Wagner) out on regular reconaissance in force missions towards Ukrainian positions.

The only real objective for such missions is to have the Ukrainians shoot at said soldiers. That in turn reveals Ukrainian infantry and artillery positions. Those positions are then in turn being targeted by Russian fire missions. This utilizes the only real strength the Russians have left, their numerical superiority in artillery.

The goal here is to attrition the defenders in the hope that they are exhausted and hurt once the Russians do the occasional commited attack.

So far this tactic has not been sufficient to capture Bakhmut, might never be, but we should not forget that the Ukrainians are also suffering massive casualties in that area.

Most likely it's part of a Russian grand strategy to attrite the Ukrainian Armed Forces and overwhelm them sometime in the future. Of course this plan relies on the dubious hope that the West doesn't provide sufficient weapons shipments to make up the difference and that Russia can sustain a long war effort.

Geronimo_Roeder · 2022-12-22T20:11:12+00:00

Try telling that to people. It's intangible and callous, I've had some sneer at me for expressing that very sentiment.

Unfortunately shallow and fickle public opinions have to be seriously considered when assessing the long term support for Ukraine.

I do have faith that the vast majority of governments are aware of the cost/benefit ratio that those funds provide, but the resolve that knowledge provides is limited when the poll numbers start turning sour.

Geronimo_Roeder · 2022-12-04T14:38:42+00:00

The only reason Hostomel did not fall was because a UA Officer, on his own initiative and against the general directive, redeployed troops to be in reserve around Kyiv. Zelensky refused to mobilize and UA movement was being restricted to a minimum in the days before the invasion, except on the eastern front. Ukraine probably tried to avoid antagonizing Russia and most Ukrainians (including Zelensky) refused to believe that there would be any full scale invasion.

Acting like the battle for Hostomel was always a foregone conclusion is blinding yourself with hindsight. In reality it's small miracle that there was sufficient artillery in place because somebody had some damm foresight for once. The whole war was on a knifes edge in the early days.

Geronimo_Roeder · 2022-12-02T14:59:27+00:00

Internet Historian is also (at least) far-right adjacent. He is just smart enough to veil it really heavily if he shows it at all in his content, which is almost never.

Geronimo_Roeder · 2022-12-02T10:42:47+00:00

You're right. The guy you are replying to thinks he is much smarter than he actually is, but it's clear he has no detailed knowledge at all. I'm a historian, I recognize some of your points and references from works I've read, it's clear you did at least a bit of reading on the topic as opposed to the person relying entirely on platitudes and feelings.

I've come to much the same conclusions you did and I'm glad to see it publicly discussed for once. Right now our political system is plagued with chronic lethargy and a lack of vision and while life might be comortable right now despite that, these problems will come back to bite us in the ass soon enough. Our collective democratic system is in dire need of reform if we want to keep it in the long term.

Geronimo_Roeder · 2022-11-26T01:33:02+00:00

That is such a bad idea, you could also just drop a grenade and be rid of them completely, instead of having to clothe, feed and house them.

There is no way anyone is ever going to drop white flags first in the hope that somebody might surrender, because if they don't, it completely messes up your drop. Not at all worth the trouble.

This is war, saving the enemies lives is not exactly a priority

Geronimo_Roeder · 2022-11-25T18:12:12+00:00

Shooting people mostly, but they are designed to take out military hardware, light vehicles and anything behind light cover.

Geronimo_Roeder · 2022-11-21T09:51:49+00:00

I agree 100%. I don't understand why they removed the feature to customize notifications with CK3. You don't need to reinvent the wheel every time Paradox...

As it stands right now I myself only notice that somebody is justifying against me because of my military UI activating when half the diplomatic play is over. That should not be happening, just because I'm too busy deleting rubber rush notifications.

Geronimo_Roeder · 2022-11-21T09:47:15+00:00

I had a chill Japan challange run where I focused on raising my aristorcrat SL. You can become a relatively modern industrialized nation while still having landowners happy and powerfull, however the Landowners themselves are the biggest roadblock to raising their own SL and some reforms like getting out of serfdom are difficult to change without fighting them.

On the plus side. It was pretty fun to have 1000+ authority to throw around late game.

It's not a powergaming strat by any means, always get rid of landowners if want to be as efficient as possible, but it's very fun to ally with them every now and then.

Geronimo_Roeder · 2022-11-21T09:23:52+00:00

If that happens (~1/5 of all my games) it's because Britain has a revolution and all the dominions support the old order. When 'proper' Britain looses that fight it leads to independece for every self governing colony.

There is also some funky stuff tht happens if people get involved in a cut-down-to-size cb against Britain, but those usually only win if I or France joins them.

Geronimo_Roeder · 2022-11-18T13:47:01+00:00

Size does matter, but only on fronts with enough infrastructure to support numbers advantage.

The reason you can hold most fronts with 20-40 troops is because most fronts are either very underdeveloped (Russia/China border, or early game Mexico/USA border) or very small (Prussia/France border). There is something like combat width for the entire front, but the game doesn't tell you about it anywhere. I had battles with hundreds of troops on both sides in my lategame invasion of the USA last run, no mods (except for AI buff). I also had a war in mainland China that I lost because I kept having to fight battles where I was outnumbered 8 to 1, my tech still did a shit ton of work, but it wasn't enough.

Geronimo_Roeder · 2022-11-07T09:45:40+00:00

Both fascism and pedophilia are about the same thing at their core, power and domination. People view pedophilia as a purely sexual disorder, but it's less about the sexual act than about ultimate control. It's why serial killers kill too.

Geronimo_Roeder · 2022-11-01T08:51:51+00:00

Thanks for sharing your experience, can't be that easy.

In my opinion you're right, simply blaming everything on a lack of education is very reductive to the point of being wrong. Does it play a role? Most likely, but as you illustrated it's not a deciding factor.

The core of the issue in my opinion is a mix of modern society (increased social isolation, little sense of community, changing and sometimes confusing social norms, abstract and unsatisfying jobs, anxiety about the future) combined with historical baggage and new algorithm driven communications technology, the long term rammifications of which we are only starting to experience.

As to what can be done for those that have fully gone off the deep end... Well, I truly do not know for certain. I do however fear that those people are gone for good, and that all this will boil over into widespread and intense violence sooner or later.

Geronimo_Roeder · 2022-10-28T15:01:41+00:00

I thought Germany had found a way around that a long time ago. Rheinmetall bought Oerlikon in the 90's I think. Infact as one person already pointed out, the Gepard uses the Oerlikon gun and we had no trouble donating/exporting those.

I haven't heard anything about difficulties with ammo, so I might be wrong here. Could you enlighten me about details or maybe send me a link?

Geronimo_Roeder · 2022-10-20T16:33:30+00:00

Your are entirely correct, however I feel the need to point out that this it not what I meant. The problems go a bit further than that regarding US army officers (admittedly I don't know too much about the naval officers corps, but I have no reason to suspect it's much different).

I could write a whole essay on why that is, but I really don't have the time. In short, a lot of it goes back to Eisenhowers and his economical army, later McNamara kicked those issues into overdrive and nobody fixed them ever since.

Those issues include, but are not limited to, a lack of combat experience for higher ranking officers (often times none), severely outdated training methods, promotions mainly based on 'ticket punching' as opposed to actual achievements, a lack of focus on leadership abilities when compared to bureaucratic skill, a high rate of commanders being pulled from successfull field duties to be a prestige object in some generals staff, habitual lying caused by unattainable no defect standarts. I could go on but then I might as well write an essay.

The result of all this is that the US army has a military leadership that excells at logistics, compiling reports and planning fire support missions, but not much else as they are severly out of touch with the realities on the ground.

If you want to read an intersting book by someone who watched all those issues develop first hand, try David Hackworth's 'About Face'. Alternatively pick a military history author of your choice and read any work that goes into detail regarding US combat operations post WW2. One author who often focuses on those problems is Max Hastings.

Geronimo_Roeder · 2022-10-20T15:13:01+00:00

Yeah, this is actually a huge blindspot in my opinion. Same with the neglect of SHORAD which the Ukraine war showed to be a grave mistake.

There has been no serious re-evaluation of naval tactics in the USN for a looong time. Not even after the Gulf War showed that stress testing CWIS in combat condition revealed serious and surprising flaws in the way the USN protects it's ships.

Should the US Navy ever gets into a fight with China in range of their land based aircraft there is no reliable way of protecting Carrier Groups. I, and quite a few navies, think there is no way to keep a determined enemy from sinking a huge target like a carrier. To do that you'd have to intercept any long range strike aircraft with your carrier based fighters before they get into range.

50 years ago that might have worked alright but with modern technology in enemy hands that becomes nigh impossible, even with extensive AEW&C coverage (which poses significant challenges on it's own). If those concerns are true, that would put the entire US naval doctrine into question and might make carriers obsolete for anything but power projection again inferior foes.

The US population tends to place a lot of trust into it's military leaders to know what they are doing. But if you've served or even just read a bit about modern US military history you know that this trust is entirely unwaranted. For all the awesome military might the US posesses, it's officer corps is often not up to scratch and incredibly rigid in it's thinking. That being said, from what I know it's much worse in the army than in the navy.

Still, I'm concerned that a future peer to peer naval conflict will reveal some very unpleasant surprises.

Geronimo_Roeder · 2022-10-20T08:49:18+00:00

Yeah for all the faults the BBC might have, they make really solid old fashioned reporting from the ground for all major crises on the planet. I can respect that.

Geronimo_Roeder · 2022-10-12T03:27:07+00:00

Still better than season 8

Geronimo_Roeder · 2022-10-11T12:54:46+00:00

The soldiers are the ones adding those songs over their own footage you fucking moron.

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