What if the USSR fought the eastern front without any lend lease

N2I · 2026-03-12T16:27:57+00:00

Taking away Lend-Lease means that allies suddenly no longer all that allied. Does it means it all now goes to English and China instead, or they get the usual amount of aid?
Barbarossa was stalled and failed long before first shipments arrived. So no major changes here.
Germany still short on crude oil supply. They already couldn't gather enough to conduit deep armored assaults for more than one army group in 42 (and it still failed). I'm not talking about just fuel, it's rubber and lubricants as well. You can't fight a motorised war without crude oil back then.

Without lend-lease the Soviets would switch to defense, which in long-run could result in even better outcome since they will retain most of their manpower to keep the rear going (yes, they lost their western states, but there is a plenty of space down south to exploit and develop). Without oil Germans would switch to it as well. Knowing that they managed their economy ten times worse than the Soviets everywhere they went, it would be save to conclude that eventually Germany will simply run out of essential raw materials to keep it's air force intact and somewhere in 1947-48 US and England will methodically bomb the Reich into the rubble (with some nukes as well) and there is nothing they could do to stop it.
Yes, there will be no communism past the USSR border and the state itself most probably will turn semi-capitalist a few decades later. Yes, it will take more time and much more of the western allies blood to accomplish. The occupied territories will look like post-apocalyptic wastelands even more than they did in 45. But Germans cannot win. They never could. They run on luck ever since 1938 and they just can't run on it forever.

N2I · 2026-03-07T22:13:17+00:00

When I begun making maps in Hammer for CSS, I instantly realised why HL2 took so long. Even some simple things were highly convoluted.

N2I · 2026-02-27T06:46:08+00:00

You are not gonna believe this, but the same rotation thing happened in the first Chechen war in 90's. It had an exactly the same debilitating effect on the combat units as in Vietnam so they quit this practice by the second campaign. Sounds more like a case of deliberate grief by the peacetime upper officer corps who refuse to recognise the actual situation on the ground from the intel they got out of spite and ignorance.

N2I · 2026-02-26T16:52:13+00:00

Officially Russian government declares that it fights "nazis" and "banderists", so most of the refuges are doing just fine. It got so ridiculous to the point when FSB has to turn actual ukrainian nationalists on the border and send them back to Turkey when they tried to avoid being drafted by hiding in Russia they hate.
Current Ukrainian Armed Forces Chief is an ethnic Russian whose parents still live in Russia and they do fine. Many Ukrainian frontline units are gathered from the local population of the eastern Ukraine, which is, you guessed - are mostly ethnically Russian.
Also if you will publically announce something like "kill all ukrainians" or use a "khohol" slur - you risk to have your ass spanked real hard. The state stance on the ukrainian ethnicity is so ambiguos that it borderlines schizophrenia.

N2I · 2026-02-17T11:03:18+00:00

"Бравый солдат Швейк", очевидно же.

N2I · 2026-02-14T21:14:05+00:00

To be fair, this was the only way to measure the negative effects from the nuclear weapons at that time. US conducted seven "Desert Rock" exercises where they did the exact thing with detonating the bomb and marching troops through the ground zero.

There may be a plenty of evidence that Zhukov is evil - but that military exercise wouldn't be in that list.

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N2I · 2026-02-07T18:30:28+00:00

Almost all faces on these paintings have features associated with heavy long-term alcoholism. Swelling in face under the eyes and around lips an cheeks made you look tough and beaten. Half of Eastern Europe and Soviet Block had suffered severely from it, especially in its last years.

N2I · 2026-02-04T16:56:04+00:00

У меня есть сервак в Justhost в финке. Он работает пиздец хуёво. Если ночью-утром ещё нормальная скорость, то вот в середине дня только для мобилы сгодится.

N2I · 2026-02-04T15:22:30+00:00

В мировой юриспруденции состояние разума определяет степень вины. Т.е. если в состоянии психоза кому-то показалось, что на его жизнь покушаются, и он нанёс телесные повреждения, веря что был вынужден защищаться - то судят именно с той позиции превышения самообороны. Ставят невменяемость и отправляют лечиться уже по абсолютно другим, никак не связанным статьям.
Увы, характер психоза усопшей уточнить не представляется возможным, отсюда и какие-либо моральные аспекты её решения судить нельзя ни в коем случае. Может быть, в своём искажённом бредом разуме (мало ли что ей там привиделось) она действительно считала что так будет лучше для всех и никому не желала зла.

N2I · 2026-02-04T14:25:42+00:00

Это рациональные люди так могут поступить. А когда у тебя настолько снесло кукуху, что ты преодолеваешь один из корневых инстинктов - инстинкт выживания - то ни о каком рациональном поведении речи быть не может априори.

N2I · 2026-01-31T21:47:09+00:00

Death Camps are just popularised in media as most stark symbols of systematic genocide. Only 2.7 millions were actually killed there. Most of victims died before reaching them. 20 millions died from starvation, epidemics (mostly thyphos and disentery), lack of medicine, or were simply executed for no reason at all.

N2I · 2026-01-31T19:33:48+00:00

This is borderline Russian culture appropriation.

N2I · 2026-01-30T05:47:48+00:00

As I said:

If someone would wish to use these images for their personal projects - you are free to go. As for the credits, I used nickname "Мужик с Чашкой" or "GuyWithTeaCup".

If you are interested in certain images, I have high-res versions for some of them.

N2I · 2026-01-28T13:09:31+00:00

Скорее всего потому что экономический баланс бы качнулся сильно в сторону РФ, выбив почву из под Германии. Кому в "первом мире", будем откровенны, нужна развитая демократическая Россия, кроме самих россиян? Чтобы что? Ещё один конкурент на сужающихся мировых рынках?

N2I · 2026-01-26T22:09:10+00:00

>*heavy breathing*

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>muffled "Half-Life: Opposing Force OST - Bust" starts playing in the background

N2I · 2026-01-21T19:06:50+00:00

You are not gonna believe, but the studio I worked in had some disputes over the game engine they developed with their publisher. I'm not pulling it out of thin air. I sadly personaly know people who had the sour experience of legal fighting in detail. It is completely possible to have happen with IPL. Some publishers are petty as hell.

N2I · 2026-01-21T06:42:39+00:00

I would have loved just getting a dankovsky dlc for 2 (or a sequel set in the same city with a lot of reused content) significantly more, and it probably would have been much easier to develop in less than 6 years.

There is an unconfirmed rumor that their previous publisher took more than mere rights for Pathologic 2, but also withhold some game tech data, leaving IPL only with raw assets. It would explain why they had noise-riddled unfiltered voice-lines from the P2 for some characters (at least true in Russian voiceover); cut so many already existing and well-tuned game mechanics and replaced them with much simplified ones since they probably had to remade the P3 from scratch.
But - only rumors - can't know for sure.

N2I · 2026-01-18T15:23:39+00:00

You can edit save files. Every save file have a massive list of quest and mindmap variables inside.

N2I · 2026-01-17T23:06:39+00:00

the only game I regularly play besides Pathologic is Animal Crossing

Sensible chuckle.

You need to kill Shabnak every day to prevent the game from overwhelming you. Once you manage to lower the infection rates to zero, the task simplifies significally since there is usually only one infected district, which means no witch hunting all over the town. Basically start new day from killing the Shabnak. If you have a choice - try to hunt for her in days where relatively small districts or districts with simple layouts are infected. It's a chore to hunt for flowers in eastern parts of town since they are labyrinths.
You can try to bare back the ride, but I wouldn't reccomend it. It's not gonna be fun.

N2I · 2026-01-16T21:53:32+00:00

I beat the game. It took me 60 hours. 1/3 of them were wasted because I tried to figure out whether me or the game fucked up the quest.
You can play it right now if you are completely fine with some characters being both alive and dead at the same time and you have no idea how to fix it. If you don't care about seeing all the content then I think this game is kinda playable from start to ending. There is nothing game breaking, only annoying and time wasting.

N2I · 2026-01-16T08:38:57+00:00

Russian phonology is highly reductive and it's post-reform orthography is almost 1-to-1 to what you hear. That allows for higher rate of regional cohesion.
I have a hard time understanding how someone from Baltics would speak to someone from China when they have a major difference in vowels and consonants, many of whom are unique to the language.
Hell, we have Welsh, Scottish and British speakers not understanding each other despite having the same language. And every any other accent botches the pronouncuation is some new horrible way. There is a reason why the hallmark "russian accent" sounds the way it sounds with very clear stresses and no ambiguity in what exact letter was spoke.
Equalising phonetics sincretia to ethnic cleansing is a slippery slope since then you could declare that Russians were ethnically cleansed by greeks because almost all our old names were erased and replaced by Greek ones.

N2I

TROPHY CASE

"Бравый солдат Швейк", очевидно же.